


Shenanigans in the Slants

by jaztice



Category: Urinetown: The Musical - Hollmann/Kotis
Genre: Angst, CladwellxPennywise, Cladwise, Drug Warning, Father-Daughter Relationship, Gen, Oh wait, Pennywell, Police Brutality, Prostitution, So much angst, Unrequited Crush, Unrequited Sexual Tension, Wishing Well?, Yep that's their ship name now it's wishing well, You know the usual stuff, a little bit of angst, also little sally and billy boy bill are totes best buddies, also they mentally scar their teacher with a ghost story, and descriptions, and old so-and-so is a total ass, and they hide out in a movie theater, anita is bae, billy boy bill showing up tiny tom who doesnt love that, bobby gets beaten up in an alley oops, cooking contests, cute fluff, cuteness, everybody hates bobby strong!, forgot to add that in for the wishing well chapter oops, have fun folks, he also has a crush on someone nine years older than him, i mean thats old news but still, isaac barrel being a total ass, julie cassidy isnt as dumb as tiny tom but she's twice as ditzy and apparently cant spell soupy, like seriously i dont even know what to tag this, little becky is totally and completely in love with hot blades harry, little sally and hannah cuff being adorable, little sally builds a smoke bomb, not so cuteness, old man strong being a total idiot as usual, or actually more like sugar thats actually crack thats actually sugar, police being dicks and trying to throw orphans off of buildings, random stuff, right now its just fluff, robby the stockfish is a thieving idiot, she's also a little shit, some idiot decides to rob the fucking k-mart and guess who it is, sorry i dont make the rules, soupy sue is a cocky little shit but i mean tbh she has a right to, tagged aggressive egg tossing for all your aggressive egg tossing needs, tiny tom is also an idiot, uhhhh what else, you'll understand
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2015-04-28
Updated: 2015-06-03
Packaged: 2018-03-26 03:27:21
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 17
Words: 23,841
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3835258
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/jaztice/pseuds/jaztice
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The Stink Years are long gone, but Cladwell's city still isn't a gleaming, golden metropolis like he wanted it to be. His city, like every city, has its slums - or, as the locals like to call it, the Slants.<br/>The Slants are a hive of wretched vermin, as Cladwell sees it. He's... actually he's kind of right there. I mean, what, you've got filthy amenities, greaser gangs, orphaned children, police brutality, and rampant uneducation all thrown into a giant pot. The only thing that makes anything worth while is Soupy Sue's cooking.<br/>Please enjoy my disjointed and ridiculous collection of Urinetown fics about those hilarious poor characters we all know and love. And would sometimes want to stab.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Character Info

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The info is based on my school's production that I was in, along with a few additions I made myself.

**List of the poor (based on my school’s production and my own insanity)**

Bobby Strong (20) – he wears suspenders and that’s all that matters

Old Man Strong (like 54) – probably friends with Old So-and-So (see below)

Old Ma Strong (56 or thereabouts) – waitress at the diner Soupy Sue cooks at

Little Sally (10) – she read the entire dictionary when she was five do I need to elaborate

Mrs. Pennywise (48) – feisty as hell and will slap you if you’re annoying

Hot Blades Harry (23) – head of a gang and also like kind of insane and attractive

Little Becky Two Shoes (21) – she wanted to be a prima ballerina but she also wanted to be punk so she turned into something in between

Billy Boy Bill (12) – miniature Hot Blades but not insane and would punch anyone who tries to fry ants with a magnifying glass

Tiny Tom (17) - he literally has the IQ of a wet paper towel

Soupy Sue (28) – best chef this side of the river (and by that I mean riverbed because water like does not exist) and also unofficially appointed collective poor mom

Robby the Stockfish (19) – a jumpy newsboy with a limp that mutters really amusing comments under his breath. He has no idea what a stockfish is, but then again neither does anyone else

Stebbo Crackson (17) – some kid that sells sugar in Ziploc bags but he tells people it’s crack

Anita Moore (16) – she lives in a trash bin and has her own one-man percussion band that actually makes more money in a day than Bobby does in a week

Julie Cassidy (31) – ditsiest mother in the known universe. She also makes money through knitting and sewing with her rusty sewing machine

Jacob Rosenbloom (25) – he’s honestly not homeless but everyone thinks he is (probably because he buys Pokémon trading cards instead of soap and toothpaste). He's also the manager of the giant K-Mart

Rodger Roosevelt (48) – he’s that one obligatory reverend that’s always showing up and obnoxiously preaching about the lord in the amenity line. Pennywise has smacked him with her ledger too many times to count

Old So-and-So (73) – that one old guy that yells obscenities at everyone and throws his dentures at teenagers

 

**Relations**

All the Strongs – family (duh)

Hot Blades Harry and Billy Boy Bill – brothers

Hot Blades and Little Becky – banging each other probably

Bobby and Hot Blades – childhood friends until SOMEONE decided to work for Mr. Cladwell

Julie Cassidy and Little Sally – mother/daughter

Tiny Tom and Stebbo Crackson – best friends

Old Man Strong and Old So-and-So – they’d be golfing buddies if they were younger and not poor assholes

Soupy Sue and everyone – Poor Mama but instead of a wooden spoon she has a ladle

Anita Moore and Bobby – literally they detest each other it’s so funny

Robby and Soupy Sue – Robby has some unrequited feelings for a certain someone nine years older than him

Stebbo and Bobby – I’m not sure how they’re friends but they are. I think they’re in a cult together

Mrs. Pennywise and Rodger Roosevelt – the only reason she hasn’t stabbed him half to death is because his sister is a police officer

Rodger and Scatz Meow - siblings (don't ask about the age difference it's an embarrassing story)

Little Sally and Senator Fipp - long lost half siblings (doubt me? read the script)

 

 

_Also, here are descriptions for the rich and the cops, made by my friend thetalkingflower on Tumblr. (ages are mine)_

**Staff of UGC:**

Hope Cladwell (21) - she has pink hair and is super duper pretty; that’s all that matters, isn’t it?

Caldwell B. Cladwell (49) - Mr. Dickbutt himself as you know and hate him

Mr. McQueen (36) - dickbutt’s personal assistant, part-time drag queen and totally straight 100%

Dr. Dawn Billeaux (24) - has a PHD in technobabble and looking good in lab coats; also feminist to the bone

Mrs. Ella Millennium (31) - dickbutt’s secretary, secretly plotting to take down the entire empire

Senator Samuel Fipp (34) - sleazeball senator who keeps hitting on the new girls at the office; dr. billeaux does not approve.

Sissy P. Fipp (29) - deals with any nosy reporters trying to publicize articles about rioting, knows all the gossip and dishes out the dirt in the break room

Jewel Airy (22) - plans the public events, kind of has a crush on Lockstock but jokes on her cuz he’s pretty much married to Barrel

Iona M. Cedes (48) - kind of a front-desk secretary and deals with people trying to get in; quiet person but secretly sassy

 

 

**P-9 squad members:**

Officer Theodore Lockstock (39) - leader, father figure of lil slay and totally not gay at all what are you talking about

Officer Isaac Barrel (32) - co-leader, out for blood and gay as hell

Zeta Blu (26) - very dedicated to her job, lockstock and barrel are her kings and she kisses up to them often (not very well liked, call her “officer bluenose”) 

Shanks McDougal (30) - stereotypical fat happy police officer who just wants donuts and social order; gender nonconforming, nobody knows their real name so “Shanks” is assumed to be

Felix “Fast Foot” McFain (24) - fastest police officer, he once chased a man in mid-pee down six city blocks on foot (and yes, the poor bastard had his wiener out)

Polly Simons (19) - tiniest and youngest policewoman on the force, affectionately nicknamed “Polly Pockets”

Tiles Mason (31) - came up with all the nicknames for the squad, has been there the longest

Hannah Cuff (21) - kicked off the academic team in high school for outshining the other members, literally a living encyclopedia

Catherine Miu (22) - nicknamed “Scatz Meow” because she likes jazz and her name sounds like a cat; a little motherly toward Polly

 

**Relationships:**

Cladwells- duh family

Senator Fipp and Sissy- brother and sister

Sissy and Dawn- token lesbian couple

Lockstock and Barrel- seriously dr. billeaux started the betting pool on those two getting together

Barrel and Hot Blades Harry- half-brothers, shared a crazy ass father

Polly and Scatz- best friends for life

http://thetalkingflower.tumblr.com/post/117649835930/shenanigans-in-the-upswings

 

(if you want to read the chapters in chronological order, this is that order: 15, 17, 12, 6, 10, 5, 16, 7, 8, 9, 13, 14, 11)

 


	2. Map of the Slants

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The map isn't quite finished I don't think, but it'll give you an idea as to where everything is. The scale is a little off (it takes about forty-five minutes to run from one side to the other nonstop between buildings and all that jazz), but yes, the K-Mart is really that enormous. Don't even ask.

Extra notes:

There's an entrance to the Secret Hideout under Topper's Cross that like never used.

No one knows why the biggest bridge is called Topper's Cross, but it is, and no one really question's it.

Soupy Sue's Diner? More like the only place in the Slants with edible food. It's also pretty cheap, which is good because otherwise Sue wouldn't be getting business.

About the bottling factory: it's not very common that people in the Slants die of natural causes (Urinetown usually gets them first), so those that DO die are either given a proper burial on the outskirts of town or thrown unceremoniously into the factory. Teenagers dare each other to sneak inside on Halloween sometimes.

The K-Mart is the size of Mount Everest because it's literally the only place people can go to buy all their stuff. 

The "abandoned" city block is that one place the city wants to tear down but never manages to do so. It's also where most of the orphans over ten live - they call it the Playground, which is half-code half-true. The police raid it every once in a while to freak out the kids because the police are assholes.

If you're wondering why the Krispy Kreme and the Police Base are so close to one another - please, you already know the answer to this.

Fun fact: Hot Blades Harry used to work at the crappy hotel as a bellhop until he "accidentally" stabbed one of the guests in the eye with a fork. 

The car wash went out of business during the drought and now it's basically drug dealer's alley. 

Rodger Roosevelt's run-down church is literally the only church in the entire Slants. Like two people go there. I'm pretty sure there's a mosque just outside the Community College but I didn't have time to add it.

There's a cop named Shanks McDougal that always goes to MickDoogal's and gets free food. No one else goes there unless it's an emergency because the food tastes like shit.

Why is the barbershop suspicious? That's an excellent question.

And another thing, why is the park called the "Pork" you ask? Why don't you ask Tiny Tom, the kid who dropped out of seventh grade because he has the IQ of a soggy lampshade, who apparently the city administration thought was the best candidate to paint "PARK" on the giant billboard that still hangs in the middle of the park today.

Yeah and apparently there's a high-end Starbucks in the middle of all this insanity. Not sure why, but there is.

Forgot to write this in: the L-shaped building between the library (32) and the hospital (23) is a movie theater. 


	3. Explaining the coin system

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> there is no story here it's another explanatory chapter sorry

Okay so I've realized that I've just been throwing you guys into this mess with like no explanation so here's my little thing about coins.

 

Types of coins: $1, $2, $5, $10, $20 (currency above 20 is in bills)

$1 - like a penny but the size of a nickel

$2 - basically a quarter

$5 - one dollar coin

$10 - looks like a one euro coin

$20 - looks like a two euro coin

(And all of them just have different pictures of Cladwell on the backs with their value and UGC on the front, because guess what folks Cladwell is now dictator of the world)

 

How much does the Amenity cost?

Before the fee hikes: $5

After the fee hikes: $8

 

By comparison, this is what other stuff costs:

Loaf of bread (in the Slants): $2

Movie ticket: $6

One bowl of Soupy Sue's Soup: $2

Bobby's daily wage: $4

A donut at Krispy Kreme for a cop: $3

A donut at Krispy Kreme for anyone else: $6

Snapbacks from the K-Mart: $15

Hot Blades Harry's hair product: $20 (it is always stolen)

 

Yeah okay so I hope that was explanatory. 

 ~~I should probably put all these "explanatory" chapters at the front shouldn't I~~  hahah look guys how adorable i was actually productive 


	4. Shitty Headcanon Drawings!!!

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Here's some shitty drawings of the characters for your enjoyment and reference. Yes, I drew them myself. No, they aren't great. No, not everyone is white.

The Poor (standing in the Amenity line because that's pretty easy right)

From left to right:

Jacob Rosenbloom, Anita Moore, Julie Cassidy, Old Ma Strong, Old Man Strong, Old So-and-So, Tiny Tom (snapback), Stebbo Crackson, Billy Boy Bill (on his big bro's shoulders), Hot Blades Harry, Little Becky Two Shoes (pregnant in a tutu), Robby the Stockfish, Soupy Sue, Rodger Roosevelt (arguing with Pennywise about Jesus), Mrs. Pennywise (on the table), Little Sally (under the table), Bobby Strong (he just wants to mop in peace). 

Headcanons? I don't have many, but Bobby and his parents are latino, Tiny Tom is a pale-ass red head, and Soupy Sue is pretty stocky (and strong). Other than that? Go wild.

 

And now, the cops!

Hey look, they're labeled! And with their nicknames too! How smart of me. 

(side note: Tiles Mason's nickname is "Stache," but it's only used behind his back because he hates it)

Headcanons? Barrel is by far the tallest and a flaming red head. That's about it.

 

There are also some other minor characters:

Juan - his age is unknown and his life even more so. he exists anywhere and everywhere. he is our past, present, and future. he is basically a filler character but the stuff i said before sounds a lot better

Horatio - the only reason he always beats Tiny Tom as employee of the month at 7/11 is because he's actually an alien

 

 

 

 

 


	5. An Encyclopedia

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Little Sally is 6, and Billy Boy Bill is 8.

“Hey Lil’ Sally!” Billy Boy Bill said, walking up to his friend. “Whatcha doin’?”

Little Sally shrugged. “Reading the encyclopedia,” she told him.

“The en-cy-cla-pee-deeya?” Billy looked surprised. “But isn’t that one of those ginormous books? How are you gonna finish it?”

“I will,” she said matter-of-factly, and left it at that.

Billy stood next to where Little Sally was sitting on the ground and looked down at the open book, amazed at all the words and little drawings scattered across the page. Books had never really interested him, but he’d always wanted to be smart like Little Sally. He wondered where she’d even gotten the encyclopedia in the first place. It’s not like there was a decent library anywhere nearby – although living in the bad part of town meant there wasn’t a decent anything nearby.

“Where’d ya get the book?” he asked curiously. Little Sally sighed, obviously focused on her reading.

“I saw the cops take Dip Simmons away to Urinetown this morning,” she answered, not looking up from her page. “Since he don’t got any family, I figured it’d be okay if I snuck in and took his encyclopedia.”

“Oh.” Billy wasn’t surprised. He hadn’t known about Dip Simmons, but that kind of thing was usual around these parts. If some person with no family got carted off to Urinetown, it was generally known that their stuff wouldn’t last a week. By the time the cops sent one of their lackeys to do clean up, most of the place was ransacked anyway. Honestly, Billy Boy Bill was amazed at Sally’s bravery; most people waited a day before going into a new exile’s house. He guessed she just really loved books.

Little Sally was lucky she still had her parents though – well, one parent. Billy’s folks had been taken off when he was two. His older brother Harry had done a pretty okay job of bringing him up though. Well, kinda. Billy was only eight, but the amount of illegal activity he’d gotten up to with his brother’s gang would probably be enough to send him to Urinetown for good. He tended to stay far, far away from cops.

“Whatcha readin’ about?” he asked, looking over her shoulder.

“Capitalism,” she answered.

“You’re already in the K’s?”

“Capitalism starts with a ‘C’ dummy.”

“Oh. Right. I knew that.”

Little Sally rolled her eyes. “You can come read with me if ya want, you know,” she told him. “I’ll explain any big words to you.”

“I know what some big words mean, Lil’ Sally,” Billy Boy grumbled, sitting down next to her. “Dismembering means cutting someone’s guts out.”

“Nuh uh, that’s disemboweling. Dismembering is cutting someone’s arms and legs off.”

“What? No it’s not!”

“Yeah it is! ‘Cause like dis- means getting rid of, and ‘members’ are limbs, like arms and legs.”

“Why would limbs be called ‘members’ though?”

“I don’t know, it’s Latin or something.”

Billy Boy Bill and Little Sally continued looking through the encyclopedia, bickering every once in a while as Sally tried explaining new words, until Billy’s older brother came sauntering into the alley.

“There ya are!” he said, grinning widely when he saw Billy. “I was wonderin’ where you ran off to. Little Sally still tryin’ to keep you in school?”

Billy looked up and grinned. He loved his brother a whole lot – he was so tough and scary and could break more rules than anyone he’d ever met. Billy wished he could be like him one day.

“Hiya, Hot Blades!” Little Sally said cheerfully, scooping up the encyclopedia and hugging it to her chest. “Does Billy have to go now?”

Billy’s heart sank. He liked reading the encyclopedia, even if Sally had been pretty annoying. But she was really smart too, smarter than anyone he’d ever met – maybe even his brother. But that was pushing it – everyone knew adults were smarter than kids, and his brother was an adult now.

Hot Blades Harry nodded. “Yeah,” he said, “we got a little snuffin’ to do. See ya around, Lil’ Sally!”

“See ya!” She grinned at Billy and skipped off, clutching the encyclopedia to her chest.

Billy looked up at his brother. “Can I go read the encyclopedia with her some other time?” he asked.

“Huh? Oh yeah, sure little man,” Harry said, rubbing Billy’s hair. “But come on, we got shit to do.”

Billy smiled and hurried after his brother. He couldn’t wait to see Little Sally again.


	6. Everyone Loves Soupy Sue's

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Bobby is 12, Hot Blades is 15

            “Hey Bobby! Let’s go to Soupy Sue’s!”

            “Alright!” I shouted back. Hot Blades Harry took off down the street, and I ran after him, stuffing a few coins into my pocket. Some rich kids had been messing around in our neighborhood, and Hot Blades and I took it upon ourselves to give them a warm welcome – and by that, I mean steal them absolutely blind. Well, Hot Blades did most of the stealing. I was the better pickpocket, but mom had threated to smack me silly if she found out I was stealing again. That was a lot scarier than even Urinetown.

            Thankfully, Harry was a pretty good friend. He freaked the rich kids out with his switchblade and tossed me a few of the coins after they ran off. They didn’t call him “Hot Blades” for nothing.

            “Hey, is your mom working?” Harry asked, running at a slower pace so I could keep up. I may have been fast, but Harry was three years older than me and had much longer legs. Honestly, I was just happy he let me stick around.

            “Yeah, she is,” I told him. “Dad got laid off again, so she’s working double time to keep us out of Urinetown.”

            “Damn that sucks,” Hot Blades said. “But hey, at least you still got ‘em right?”

            “Yeah…” Harry’s parents had been taken away two years ago, leaving him alone with just his little brother, Billy. Since Billy was only four, he and most of the other orphaned kids just stuck around at Soupy Sue’s restaurant. Soupy had kinda been declared the Slant’s community mom ever since Anita’s dad died of some cough or another three years ago. Now she was twenty and owned the best restaurant this side of town.

            Why she’s called “Soupy” Sue I have no idea. The “soup” she makes is more of a chunky sludge, but it’s the best tasting chunky sludge in existence. Even the cops will wander down every once in a while and buy a bowl.

            We kept running through the dirty streets and down brick alleys until we reached a misshapen building with the sign “Soupy Sue’s – two dollars per bowl” hanging above the doorway. Like most of the building in the Slants, the restaurant was made of dirty brick and just slightly tilted enough to make it seem off-balance. During the Stink Years, an earthquake had come through and brought down half the town, leaving the other half a little lopsided but still standing. Over the years, the tilted side became more stable as steel bars and other supports were built in, but no real improvements were made. The rest of the town had been taken over and built into a gleaming city, which was where the rich people lived. That’s why the poor part of town was called the Slants. You could always tell which buildings were new because they didn’t look lopsided and weren’t built into each other for extra support.

            “Damn, I can smell the sludgy goodness from out here!” Harry said with a sniff. “I wonder how she makes it?”

            “Mom says she makes it by throwing whatever she can find into a pot and stirring it up,” I told him.

            “That seems a little weird. What if stuff doesn’t taste good together?”

            “Mom also says Sue’s got a weird talent for cooking.”

            “Your mom sure does know a lot, doesn’t she?” Hot Blades said sarcastically. My stomach twisted, but I didn’t say anything; Hot Blades didn’t really like adults too much.

            “Come on, let’s go inside,” I said, and ran ahead. The loud bell on the door jingled as we let ourselves in through the curtained screen door.

            “Hey boys!” Soupy said from the kitchen. Her “kitchen” consisted of two giant stoves crowded with a variety of big steel pots hidden behind a dirty counter with a sink for washing dishes (Anita was stationed there). There was also a door to the back and shelves and fridges filled with whatever food she managed to get on her hands. Selling food to Soupy could get you a few coins, but Soupy Sue was very picky customer. I tried selling her animal crackers once and it didn’t turn out so well.

            “Hi Soupy Sue!” Harry and I shouted. We ran up to the counter and climbed into the wobbly chairs she’d probably gotten from a garage sale. There were other people in the restaurant, but the counter was reserved for kids only – and occasionally cops, but only because no one wanted to argue with them.

            “So, what do you boys want?” Soupy asked, grinning as she stirred three pots simultaneously. I could see Harry’s little brother Billy drawing on the back door with a crayon, obviously enjoying himself.

            “Whatcha got?” Hot Blades asked in return, lifting himself up so he could see into the pots.

            “Sit your butt down you little heathen,” Soupy snapped. “I’ve got some stuff that’s mostly beans and some stuff that’s mostly pork.”

            “I’ll take the pork,” Hot Blades said.

            “I’ll have a little of both, please,” I told her.

            Soupy Sue nodded and grabbed two chipped ceramic bowls and a pair of spoons out from under the counter and dished out some grub for us. My stomach growled and we started digging in – it’d been a while since I’d had anything to eat.

            “Hey there, boys,” my mom said, bringing some empty dishes up to the counter. “Having fun?”

            I nodded, my mouth full of food. “Where’s dad?” I asked.

            “Don’t speak with your mouth full, Bobby.”

            I swallowed my sludge. “Where’s dad, mom?”

            She jerked her head towards a table in the corner. My dad had his hand on his chin, staring at the wall across from him as a bowl of mostly-beans sat untouched in front of him.

            “He was up all night trying to find a job,” she said sadly, giving bowls to Anita behind the counter. “Looks like he’s cooking up another one of his schemes.”

            “Oh no,” I said. Dad’s schemes were known for showing up when he was down on his luck – they were also known for being ridiculous and never, ever working. Ever.

            Hot Blades snorted into his food. “You mean like that time he tried tricking Mrs. Pennywise into locking herself in the amenity?” he asked, his mouth still full of food. “Oh yeah, that one worked pretty good.”

            “Pretty _well,_ Harry,” my mom said, “and don’t chew with your mouth open.”

            Hot Blades rolled his eyes and kept eating. He and my mom never really got along.

            The bell over the door jangled, and in walked two cops; one of them was Officer Lockstock, who I’d seen around some, but the other was a new cop, a redhead. My heart leapt into my throat and Hot Blades and I glanced at each other. Did they know about us stealing from those kids? Was that why they were here?

            “Hello officers,” Soupy Sue said from behind the counter. “Need anything?”

            “Just some grub,” Lockstock answered, giving her a smile and walking over to the counter. He sat down right next to me, and his partner next to him. I tensed up – what was he sitting next to me for?

            The two of them ordered and started eating their food, but I’d lost my appetite. I figured it’d be suspicious if I stopped eating though, so I put some more sludge into my mouth and chewed. Hot Blades Harry, slick as his stupid hairdo, placed two dollars in coins on the counter and left, leaving me alone with the cops.

            Wow, thanks for the support Hot Blades.

            I listened to the cops’ conversation (apparently the redhead’s name was Barrel), trying to gauge if they’d notice me putting a few coins on the counter and leaving like Harry did. But before I could work up the courage, Officer Lockstock turned to me.

            “Say, aren’t you that kid I saw down at the pawn shop the other day?” he asked, giving me a weird look. “What was your name again?”

            “Bobby,” I said quickly.

            “Bobby, huh?” Lockstock gave me a smile. It looked pretty genuine, but I’d learned the hard way not to trust cops, especially ones that worked on this side of town. Lockstock always seemed to have a soft spot for kids though.

            “Hey, you! What do ya want with my son?”

            Oh great.

            The three of us turned to see my dad hobbling over to us, his hands in the pockets of his dirty denim jumpsuit. His face was red and he looked angry – angry enough to talk back to a cop for sure.

            “You must be Bobby’s father,” Officer Lockstock said, his voice much colder. “And you are?”

            “Joseph Strong,” my dad said, crossing his arms and giving the two cops the stink eye. “That’s Mr. Strong to you.”

            “Mr. Strong, huh?” Lockstock glanced around, and I did the same. Everyone in the restaurant was looking at us. “You realize you’re talking to an officer of the law, don’t you, Mr. Strong?”

            “I realize I’m talking to a scumbag that isn’t worth the dirt on my shoe, but sure, you can call yourself an officer of the law if that makes you feel better.”

            “Joseph!” Mom yelled, her face worried and stern.

            Dad ignored her. “What,” he said, raising his voice, “you don’t think we notice the things you do to us? Keep us beaten down in poverty just so the rest of you can live the high life? No, we can see, Mister Lockstock. And I’m pretty sure everyone here can see that I’m done with putting up with it!”

            My dad stood seething in front of Officer Lockstock, his hands curled into fists. I thought Lockstock would whip out his baton and smash it across my dad’s face, but he didn’t. He just sighed and stood up, pulling some coins out of his pocket and placing them on the counter.

            “Officer Barrel,” he said, his eyes never leaving my dad’s face, “I believe this man needs a little air.”

            “Yes sir,” Barrel said, a grin spreading over his face. He stepped forward and grabbed my dad by the arm.

            “Let go of me!” Dad shouted as Barrel dragged him towards the door. “You can’t do this to me, I’m-”

            And then Lockstock punched my dad right in the head, knocking him out cold.

            “Hey!” I shouted, and my mom ran forward, but Lockstock put his hand on his baton and glared at us, stopping my mom in her tracks.

            “Where are you taking him?” she asked frantically. My stomach collapsed in on itself – were they taking him to _Urinetown?_ Just for that?

            “Just to get some air,” Lockstock said smoothly as his partner dragged my dad’s limp body out the door. “Don’t worry ma’am, he won’t be getting exiled – at least not today.”

            Then he grinned, a much eviler grin than he’d given me, and followed his partner out the door, leaving the restaurant in dead silence.

            After a moment, Soupy Sue cursed and said, “Damn it, I burned the pork!” After that, low murmurs began as Sue furiously stirred one of her many pots on the stove.

            Mom walked up next to me and put a hand on my shoulder. “Please don’t end up like your father, Bobby,” she said softly to me. “Don’t be like him.”

            “Yeah,” I told her, “I have a feeling I’ll be hearing that a lot.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> it began so innocent, now look where we are  
> (ps I'm thinking that bills are only used by rich people and coins range from 25 cents to $10)


	7. "Let's go rob a rich person!"

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Tiny Tom and Stebbo Crackson are 14, Anita is 13

            “Tiny, this is a very bad idea.”

            Tiny Tom, Stebbo’s best friend and unfortunate crush, glared at him in unamusement. “What,” he responded, “would you rather see me get sent off to Urinetown?”

            “No, but…” Stebbo buried his face into his hands. “There are better ways to scrape a few coins together Tiny,” he mumbled.

            “Oh lighten up, Stebbs!” Anita said, punching him lightly on the arm. “It’s just a house. We sneak in, steal some prime shit, and sneak back out. What could go wrong?”

            “I really wish you wouldn’t say that.”

            Tiny Tom sighed. “Do I need to remind you what it is you do for a living, Stebbo?” he said.

            “Hey! Dealing suga- crack down at a car wash is a _lot less dangerous_ than sneaking into some rich person’s house! What if they have security? Or guard dogs?”

            Anita rolled her eyes, her leg bouncing with excitement. Stebbo was pretty sure the only reason she’d come along was because she’d been bored. That, and her drumming business hadn’t exactly been too successful lately.

            Honestly, Stebbo was in need of some extra moolah too, but he wasn’t about to risk exile to Urinetown in the slight change they might get a few coins. Not that he had much say in the matter. When Tiny Tom had his heart set on something, there was very little that would sway him, especially if money was involved. And wherever Tiny Tom went, Stebbo Crackson would follow, for better or for worse.

            This, Stebbo was pretty sure, was definitely a “worse” kind of situation.

            Tom finally sighed and stood up. “Alright,” he said, pulling a battered screwdriver out of his basketball shorts, “I’m breaking in through the rear window. If you guys don’t want to come, I’ll go alone.”

            “Tiny, wait-!” Stebbo began, but his friend leaped over the bush they’d been hiding behind and sprinted for the back window across the lawn. Anita cackled and ran after him, leaving Stebbo alone behind a half-dead bush. After a second of cursing his choice in friends, Stebbo groaned and ran after the two of them, hoping to god that Tiny wouldn’t get them all killed.

            As Tiny Tom messed around with the window lock in the dark, Stebbo was glad he’d thought of at least getting his friends black clothes before going through with this idiotic plan. Because Soupy Sue didn’t have enough space in her diner for orphans over ten (unless they wanted to keep their dishwashing job), Stebbo, Tiny, and Anita had learned how to fend for themselves. This mostly involved them never going to school, taking odd jobs, and living in dumpsters. Stebbo, unlike his friends, had gotten a steady job at the shady Goodwill in the middle of the Slants, and he used his “influence” to grab some black clothes and masks for his buddies before their little escapade later tonight. At least this way they’d be harder to see in the dark, right?

            Finally, Anita snatched the screwdriver out of Tiny’s hands and jammed it into the lock, turning it as hard as she could. The lock popped right out of the windowsill, letting Anita shove it up and climb through with ease.

            Tiny Tom looked a little disgruntled. “I didn’t need your help,” he grumbled, following her in.

            “Yeah you did,” Anita said with a smug grin. Stebbo climbed in last and shut the window behind him.

            “So,” Stebbo whispered, his muscles taut, “what exactly was the rest of your oh-so-excellent plan, Tom?”

            “Grab as much shiny shit as you can and get back out the window,” he whispered back before running over to a side table and stuffing a golden ashtray into his pocket.

            Anita rolled her eyes and pulled a canvas bag out of the bottom of her shirt. “At least I came prepared,” she muttered, and ran towards a room with some kind of giant fancy piano in it.

            “Let’s not forget Tiny failed out of eighth grade this year,” Stebbo whispered in response. She snorted and threw some crap in her bag as Tiny shot him a withering glare.

            Stebbo rolled my eyes and looked around, trying to find something to carry crap in, but eventually he gave up and just started grabbing things and stuffing them in his pockets. As he reached for a golden candelabra sitting on a side table, he heard a creak on the spiral stairs behind him and everything was suddenly bathed in light. Stebbo whipped around, candelabra in hand, and caught sight of a pink-haired man wearing a fluffy golden bathrobe, staring at him in confusion and horror.

            Senator Fipp. The only reason Stebbo knew him was because Hot Blades had made fun of his stupid pink hairdo after the Senator showed up on TV after an important vote.

            “Oh shit, it’s a rich girl!” Stebbo heard Tiny say.

            The man turned to Tiny, insulted. “Excuse me?!” he shouted.

            “RUN!” Anita shouted, and suddenly Stebbo saw a flying canvas sack in the corner of his eye. He ducked just as it crashed through the window they’d come in through, setting the alarms off in a terrifying frenzy.

            Finally, Tiny and Stebbo stopped freezing in place and ran for the window, jumping through and cutting themselves along the way. Anita scooped up her bag, and the three of them sprinted as fast as they could towards the riverbank. The alarms blared and police sirens blared and Stebbo was pretty sure Senator Fipp was screaming bloody murder, but he managed to tune it out and just run as fast as he could towards the Slants.

            “Oh yeah, great idea Tiny!” Anita yelled. “Way to go! Let’s just break into the house of the most _important senator in the entire city_ and steal some of his valuable trinkets! Way to think ahead!”

            “Shut up, you’re the one that agreed to this!” he shouted back.

            The three of them kept running until they finally reached Topper’s Cross, the biggest bridge over the dried riverbed that’s now the main sewer pipe. Tiny, Anita, and Stebbo slipped down underneath the bridge just as a mob of cop cars with blinking blue lights flew overtop of them into the rich side of town. Together, they leaned against the wall of the deep riverbed, chests heaving.

            “Well,” Stebbo finally said. “I’d say I told you so, but-”

            “But you’re a good friend that doesn’t want to damage your now dwindling relationship with me?” Tiny interjected.

            “Uh, no, actually I’m an asshole. I told you so.”

            Anita snorted, and the three thieves ran over the main pipe and slipped into the secret entrance to the secret hideout. When they finally reached the hideout, all three of them flopped onto the ground and let their goods spill out of their pockets and bags onto the dirty floor.

            “Good. Fucking. God,” Tiny said. “That was the best thing ever.”

            Stebbo lifted his head and shot his friend a glare. “Tiny,” he said, “if you weren’t my friend, I would kill you.”

            “No you wouldn’t.”

            “Yeah, he probably would,” Anita added. Stebbo grinned, staring at the dirty ceiling.

            “Well,” he finally said, sitting up, “let’s go sell this to the pawn shop. I think we’ll be set for a little while with all this shit, right?”

            It was silent for a little while, and then the three of them burst out laughing. Stebbo guessed that their brush with death had driven them all insane. Eventually though, they all stood up and snuck out of the hideout to go reap their spoils. There wouldn’t be Urinetown for them anytime soon.  


	8. Bloody Mouth

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Bobby is 17, Hot Blades is 20

            “Well, look who it is. Bobby Strong, coming home from his fancy new job.”

            I turned around and saw Hot Blades Harry, standing half in the shadows with his hands jammed into his pockets. Behind him, I could count five other people, all members of Harry’s gang. Normally, I wouldn’t have been as nervous, but from the way Hot Blades had called me out, in the middle of a dark alley late at night surrounded by his gang… I mean I wasn’t an idiot.

            Hot Blades and I had been friends since basically birth though. He wouldn’t do anything to me. Right?

            “Hey Hot Blades,” I said, shifting my work belt a little uneasily on my hip. He and his gang didn’t step out of the dark. “What’s… what’s up?”

            Then Harry cackled and finally stepped into plain view, crossing his arms in front of his chest. His eyes had that crazy look in them he got when he was angry, and I wasn’t too excited to realize he had them aimed at me.

            “’What’s up,’ he asks us,” Hot Blades said to his gang, “’What’s up,’ as if he doesn’t know already. Jeez, Bobby, I thought you were the smart one.”

            His voice had an edge to it that made me uneasy. On instinct, I started glancing around the alleyway, looking for a way out, and caught sight of a side alley to my left. But before I could even take a step towards it, Harry snapped his fingers towards my exit and three of the younger kids went and blocked it.

            My hands started shaking, just slightly. “What is this, Harry,” I asked.

            Hot Blades Harry snorted and walked towards me, taking up the entire alley like he owned it. And, well, in a way he kind of did. Hot Blades’ gang of misfits ruled this part of the Slants – and until recently, I’d been a part of that gang too.

            “Oh,” he said, leaving Robby and Becky to guard the other exit as he strolled down the alley, “I’m sorry. Are ya talkin’ to me, amenity boy? Or did ya mean to speak with Mister High and Mighty Cladwell over there? Huh?”

            “Hot Blades, what are you-”

            “Aw, shut up, Bobby! You know exactly what I’m talkin’ about!”

            I stared at him. Was this seriously what he was upset over?

            “Harry, I got a job,” I told him, one hand on the wrench in my belt just in case. “It’s not like I ratted you out to the cops. What’s the big deal?”

            “What’s the big deal? What’s the big deal?! You left the gang to go work for that gold suited pig up in Rich Town, that’s the big deal! Ya don’t even gotta pay the fee anymore! What’s the big deal, you know what the goddamn big deal is Bobby Strong!”

            Harry was in my face now, but I wasn’t backing up. I could feel something boiling in the pit of my stomach – rage. Hot, blinding rage. The kind I’d felt a lot towards cops when I saw them beating on another street urchin, or when they dragged another kid’s parents off to Urinetown. But I’d never felt it towards Harry, not until now.

            It didn’t take me long to realize why.

            “Oh, I’m sorry,” I spat out, “is that what you’re pissed about? Or are you just pissed off that I got a job and you can’t even make an honest living to save your goddamn life?”

            “You shut the fuck up, Strong.”

            “You know what, no, I don’t think I will! Do you even realize how long I’ve waited for this opportunity? All you’ve ever been on me is a bad influence. But you know what? For once, I’m sticking up for myself and doing something right! I’m gonna make something out of my life, Harry, and as much as it pisses you off, you and I both know that won’t ever happen if I’m stuck in that rat hole of a clubhouse for the rest of my life!”

            Harry’s fist came out of nowhere and slammed into my eye, sending me sprawling backwards into a pile of trash. Stars exploded in my head and my head spun. Before I even knew what was happening, I’d pulled myself to my feet and lifted my fists in front of my face, glaring at Hot Blades with my good eye. Growing up on the streets had taught me getting caught on the ground was a surefire way to get yourself killed, and that wasn’t something I wanted happening tonight.

            “What,” I said, my head throbbing painfully and my eye swelling shut, “I hurt your feelings?”

            Hot Blades Harry gritted his teeth, fists clenched at his sides. “You know damn well you won’t last a minute against me, Bobby,” he growled.

            “You sure about that?” I countered. I mean, I was sure of that – Hot Blades was a good four inches taller than me, not to mention I was skinny as a pole. Plus he had a knife and three years of experience on me. If I got into a fight with him, I was as good as dead.

            But honestly, I felt like this fight had waited a long time to be played out.

            “Look at ya,” Hot Blades said, tilting his head mockingly, “standing there all ready to fight like some Kung Fu master. You just don’t know when to quit, do ya?”

            “I’ve been told it’s one of my better qualities.”

            Hot Blades snorted again. “That and signing up to do the devil’s work, that’s for goddamn sure.”

            “I signed up for that job so my mom wouldn’t have to worry about me ending up dead or worse every single night, Hot Blades. But wait, you wouldn’t know about that, would you?”

            I realized I’d made a mistake when Harry’s eyes flashed red and his fists flew forward again. Somehow, I managed to get a few punches in before he kicked me into the wall and knocked my breath out. Then he grabbed the front of my shirt and slammed my back against the bricks as I struggled to breathe.

            “Don’t you _ever_ say that shit about me _ever again_ , you little fucker. You hear me?” he roared into my face. “You have no fucking right to say shit, Strong. I’m surprised you’re still alive – the Slants are no place for a coward like you!”

            I gasped, my lungs opening as I sucked in air. “I’m not a coward!” I choked out.

            “The hell you aren’t!”

            I gritted my teeth and tried to kick him, but he slammed his foot into my shin and sent a jolt of pain skyrocketing up my spine. I cried out and tried jerking away, but Hot Blades Harry was ten times stronger than me. Somehow, I found that pretty ironic.

            Then I felt that boiling again, filling up every limb and sense in my body, and I knew that I wanted to hurt him. I didn’t care how, but I wanted him to feel just as bad as he’d made me feel when I did something I was proud of and all he did was scorn me. So instead of beating him up, I glared at him and ran my mouth.

            “Oh, I’m the coward?” I shouted. “Me? That’s real rich, coming from the guy that can’t do a single honest thing with his life.” I was screaming loud enough for the entire block to hear me, but I didn’t care. I wanted everyone to hear what I had to say. “What, afraid people might think you aren’t badass enough to head a gang? Afraid you may lose your street cred? Or are you scared your kid brother might lose respect for you? Well guess what, Harry – he already has! You deal crack and mug old men to get money instead of finding a goddamn job! And what’d this coward do? _He got a fucking job!_ At this point I think even Billy knows I’d be a better role model for him than you’d ever be!”

            I saw Hot Blades’ eyes fill with rage and felt him hit me five, ten, twenty times, hard enough to crack ribs and fill my mouth with iron blood. And I fought back, I fought back as hard as I could, but there was no way I was going to win. I’d known that going in. But someone had to say those things to him. I’d wanted to say that to him since the day his parents were taken away, but I didn’t because I was scared. Only now I wasn’t. And as much as it hurt, as much as it drove a rift between him and me that we might never be able to fix, I didn’t regret saying it for the world.

            By the time Harry stopped beating on me, I was wedged in the corner between the ground and the alley wall, lying on my side with every part of my body feeling broken and my mouth full of blood. Harry stood over me, his chest heaving and his fists bloodied, fury still burning in his eyes.

            And then he reached into his pocket and pulled out his switchblade, flicking it open just right so the lamplight at the other end of the alley flashed off of it. At that point, not a moment sooner, was when my heart started racing.

            Hot Blades Harry had gotten his nickname from sending four cops to the hospital with nothing but his switchblade at the age of eleven. I’d seen him spin and twirl that knife like nobody’s business before ramming it into someone’s side. He’d sliced open gashes in people’s faces deeper than I thought possible with that knife. Every time he took that thing out of his pocket, I knew shit was about to go down.

            Only this time it was going down on me.

            I stared up at him, unable to do anything but wince and try to scoot away. His knuckles around the knife handle were white as milk, and both the blade and his other fist were shaking. Seeing him standing over me like that made me realize just how much I didn’t want to die, that I was only seventeen and my mom didn’t deserve to have a son that died in an alley in the Slants because he couldn’t keep his mouth shut.

            And then, like a miracle, the fire in Harry’s eyes died and he flicked his knife shut, shoving it back into his pocket.

            “You’re out of the gang,” he growled. “I catch you in the clubhouse and you won’t live to see the next Amenity line, got it?”

            Our gazes locked and I looked away, focusing my eyes on the ground.

            Harry took that as a yes and turned away, snapping his fingers as he walked down the alley. His gang immediately scurried off after him, a few glancing back towards me with conflicted looks on their faces, but they all eventually followed him off, leaving me in the back of an alley with some broken bones and a bloody mouth.

           

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> *cackles evilly as "im not sorry" plays in the distance*


	9. This is a Disgrace to Public Libraries Everywhere

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Hannah Cuff is 19, Little Sally is 8

First of all, I’d like to point out that the Slants Public Library is the most horrendous public library known to man.

When I was a kid, it was the only place in the Slants with books I could afford to read – since, you know, they’re free – and honestly the selection they had wasn’t too awful, but there was absolutely no system of organization. The books were just stacked haphazardly in corners or against the wall, piled on chairs and under tables. And the shelves were _so_ disorganized. Plus, there was only one librarian who I’m pretty sure was Old So-and-So’s older stepsister, meaning she was basically a fossil and completely useless.

But despite all that, the Slants Public Library was probably the only place in the Slants I could ever really call home. My mom had been taken to Urinetown when I was a baby, leaving me with my drunk, abusive dad – how wonderful, right? I managed to get him arrested when I was eight, but then I had nowhere else to go. After a few weeks of sleeping in trash bins, I finally found a home inside the library; it was cozy underneath the tables, and Mrs. Whatever-Her-Name-Is the librarian gladly gave me a key and let me stay there for as long as I wanted. I read as much as I could and learned a lot, and I even attempted to organize the books at one point just before I left.

The only reason I didn’t become the new librarian of that place was because of Shanks. Shanks was my best friend, and they came to see me all the time in the library. When we decided to join the police force together, I had to leave the library behind.

Well, until today of course.

Felix and Tiles, to two biggest assholes in training, had managed to set my room on fire while I was taking my exams. Since Shanks was busy on a training exercise with Officer Barrel, I didn’t really have anyone else to talk to, so I ended up wandering back to the library. The old librarian had been carted off to Urinetown a few years ago, but I still had a key – and besides, no one in the Slants wanted to steal books.

After wandering between the shelves for a few minutes, I eventually decided to be productive and continue my daring attempt at organization. Easier said than done, mind you – in the past few years, the library had ceased to be a library and was more just a place for the pawnshop to throw the books people sold them to save space. The books in the library ranged from old city hall records to hardback editions of To Kill a Mockingbird to children’s pop-up books to leather-bound diaries of long-gone relatives. I mean really, how was I supposed to organize all this?

I sighed and cleared a space on the floor by tossing books over my shoulders. Well, it wasn’t like I had anything better to do.

After a few minutes of seemingly futile attempts to sort books into piles, I realized that I wasn’t alone. Someone was watching me from behind one of the shelves; I couldn’t tell who, but I had a feeling whoever it was didn’t want me to find them. Maybe it was one of those cheapskates, trying to mug a cop and steal a few coins before the afternoon rush. Unfortunately for me, the public library happened to be situated right in the worst part of the Slants, where assholes like that were common.

Great. Just what I needed.

I pretended not to notice them for a couple of minutes, continuing to organize books. When I glanced over, pretending to look for more books, I noticed the figure duck behind the shelf. They were small, definitely a kid, and they seemed to be holding a book in their arms.

I turned back around slowly, placing a few more books down, and then with lightning speed I whipped out my flashlight and spun on my toes, aiming the light on the child.

Oh. It was Little Sally.

I didn’t know Sally personally, but Officer Lockstock had talked about her a lot during late night training searches. She was one of the many orphans living in the Slants, but she was probably the only one to have Theodore Lockstock’s good graces. Honestly, I kind of envied her. Lockstock talked about Little Sally as if she were his daughter; even without any parents, that girl had more of a father figure than I’d ever had in my life.

I mean then again, that probably would’ve backfired in my case. I tended to be a little too rebellious and independent when it came to “parental figures.”

“Well hey there Little Sally,” I said with a grin, lowering my light so it was out of her eyes. “Didn’t know it was you in here.”

She noticed my grin and relaxed a little. “Just getting some books is all,” she told me. “Are you one of the new cops?”

“Not yet.” I shook my head. “I’m still training. How’d you get in here anyhow?”

“Oh.” Little Sally stared at the ground. “It’s kinda a secret.”

“I promise I won’t tell anyone,” I said, giving her a wink.

She bit her lip and looked around, like she was afraid of someone hearing. Then she leaned in and whispered, “There’s a boarded up window in the back that has a pretty big gap in it. I can squeeze through real easy ‘cause I’m so small!”

A gap in the boards, huh? That sounded like my secret entrance back when I used to live here.

“What are you hanging around the public library for anyway?” I asked her, sitting down in the middle of a book pile. “Most kids around here don’t come near the library if they can help it.”

“Oh I love it here!” Little Sally spun around, hugging her book to her chest. “Books are my favorite thing in the whole wide world! They have stories and they tell you about stuff like what hydraulics are and how to make cupcakes and things like that. I always try to get new books.” Then she stopped and looked at me, tilting her head. “Say, how’d you get in Miss Policewoman? You can’t have gone through the way I did.”

I smiled. “My name’s Hannah,” I told her, “And I have a key to the front door.”

Her eyes widened in amazement. “How’d you get that?” she asked incredulously.

“Believe it or not, I used to live here,” I said. “When I was a kid we didn’t have a whole block of empty apartment buildings for orphans to live in, so I came here instead. The librarian gave me a key so I wouldn’t have to wait for her to open the library every day.”

Little Sally’s eyes were as wide as dinner plates. “You used to _live_ here? With all the _books_?” she asked. “That’s so cool! I wanna live here like that too!”

“You do, huh?” I said. “Well, how about we make a deal. I’ll give you this key if you promise to help organize the library while you live here.”

“The whole library?” she asked, her voice falling.

“I’ll help you, don’t worry!” I encouraged. “Plus, it won’t be so hard when you get started. But you gotta promise me that you’ll take good care of these books, okay?”

She nodded, her little face very serious. “Okay!”

I grinned and tossed her the key. She caught it easily, almost dropping her book in the process. I was finally able to see the title: _An Essay on the Principle of Population_ by Thomas Robert Malthus. What was she reading that old thing for?

“Gee, thanks Miss Hannah Policewoman!” she said cheerfully, slipping the key into her pocket. “I’m gonna put my book on the counter and come help you, okay?”

“Alright,” I said, and returned to my sorting. After a minute, Little Sally returned and helped clear a bigger space and clean up my groupings – she was a lot smarter than one would expect an eight-year-old girl from the Slants to be. By the time I had to go back to the police base, we’d sorted out a good portion of the books in one side of the library and cleared some of the shelves. I’d even been able to make paper labels that we taped onto the shelves.

I felt kind of sad about giving up my key to the library – I mean, this place had been my home for almost ten years. But I had a feeling Little Sally would put it to good use. After all, people who loved books on this side of town were as scarce as lizards in Antarctica, and this library couldn’t be entrusted to just _anyone_ , now could it?


	10. Sleeping in a Gutter is Always a Bad Idea

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Robby is 14, Soupy Sue is 23, and Stebbo is 12

Robby really wasn’t in the mood to get stepped on this morning, but life doesn’t always go your way when you sleep in a gutter.

There he was, minding his own business, doing his usual orphaned-kid-living-in-the-Slants routine, when _someone_ decided to use him as a human stepping-stone. Which, by the way, _hurts_. He shouted and flailed, his eyes barely open, and the person stepping on him shrieked and jumped back.

“Oh god, sorry!” the stepper shouted. “Are you alright?”

Robby blinked the drowsiness out of his eyes and glared up at…

Oh god.

Oh no.

“Oh, hey!” Soupy Sue shouted – for it’d been Soupy Sue to step on him, how flipping perfect – and grinned. “It’s you Robby. How are ya?”

Robby felt like melting into sludge and slipping down the gutter. Perfect, just freaking perfect.

Soupy Sue had always been someone special to Robby ever since he could remember. Robby’s dad had been taken to Urinetown when he was six, and his mom often used to leave him at Sue’s while she worked at the K-Mart. She was always nice to him and let him eat food for free – she even let him stir her sludge one time, which is supposedly an honor. A few months ago though, Robby’s mom had gotten exiled to Urinetown too.

Soupy Sue was pretty strict about shutting kids out once they hit that ten-years-of-age mark, and this left Robby with nowhere to go. Which was pretty typical of the Slants, honestly. Since the orphanage was barely even operational anymore and the abandoned building block was ruled by a twenty-year-old that hated Robby’s guts, he’d been sleeping in the gutters near the newsstand for the past few months. To keep out of Urinetown himself, he’d been taking odd jobs and was usually the Slanted Review’s first newsboy whenever they were in business (which meant whenever they could afford enough ink and paper to actually print the damn articles).

He hadn’t seen Soupy in a while, at least not alone. Needless to say, he wasn’t exactly excited for their first meeting alone since his mom’s arrest to take place with him stuck in a gutter.

And… he was stuck. Wedged, actually. Robby tried squirming to get out, but all he succeeded in doing was sticking himself further into the gutter. Oh god damn it!

“Uh…” Robby squirmed a little in the gutter so he could face up. “Hey Soupy. I’m uh… fine.”

“Oh Jesus, are you stuck in the gutter?” Soupy Sue asked. “Here, let me help you out.”

“No, no I don’t need any- AH!” Robby’s remark was cut short as Soupy grabbed him with both hands and yanked up. She kept pulling, and Robby managed to twist his way out of harm enough for Sue to pop him out of the gutter. They both fell back, yelling in surprise, landed on the ground. It took Robby a moment to realize he was lying on Soupy Sue’s boobs.

“Oh shit!” He scrambled off, his hands up apologetically. “Uh, uh, sorry Soupy! Oh wait here.” He grabbed her hand and pulled her up. “You alright? Sorry I, uh-” Crap, he was holding hands with her! Robby yanked his hand away and stuffed it in his vest pocket. “Uh, uh, sorry, I’ll just, um, I’ll just go…”

“Robby?” Soupy asked confusedly, but Robby had already run off, his face burning.

 

* * *

 

“Oh god, it was _so embarrassing_ ,” Robby told Stebbo Crackson about twenty minutes later. Robby was sitting against a wall in the abandoned car wash (now drug dealer alley), head in his hands, done explaining his mortifying run-in with Soupy Sue. Meanwhile, his twelve-year-old friend tried to sell “crack” in broad daylight. Even this wasn’t an odd sight – cops barely ever came this south into the Slants, and even if Stebbo was the youngest crack dealer by at least four years, there were enough dumb folks in the Slants to actually buy his product. Which right now happened to be the sugar from his pantry.

“Oh, lighten up Robby!” Stebbo said, watching out for any possible customers. “I’m sure it wasn’t that bad.”

“Trust me, it was.”

“Well…” Stebbo seemed to be searching for something to say. Eventually, he just shrugged and held out a Ziploc bag of “drugs.”

“Here,” he said, “have some crack.”

Robby looked at him. “That’s sugar.”

“Shh! No, it’s crack. I just _say_ is sugar when _cops_ are around.” Stebbo winked at Robby in what was probably the most conspicuous way he could manage and dropped the sealed bag into Robby’s lap.

Robby picked it up, looked at it, and then stared at Stebbo. “Stebbo,” he said, “this is _actually sugar_.”

“Oh my god! Robby, how thick are you?”

“What?!”

Stebbo groaned and rolled his eyes. “Fine, whatever,” Stebbo said. “It’s sugar. But don’t go spreading it, okay? I’m trying to run a business here.”

“Stebbo Crackson, you are _twelve-years-old_.”

“And you’re fourteen and sleep in a gutter like a stockfish, Robby. I think we both lose this one.”

Robby narrowed his eyes at Stebbo. “What’s a stockfish?” he asked.

“I…” Stebbo was yet again at a loss for words. “Actually I have no idea.”

Robby face palmed and slumped over on his side, lying on the ground with a Ziploc bag of sugar lying in front of his face. God, what a mess he and his friends were. Granted, all of them were poor and their families were in varying states of decay, but still, it was a little irritating when half his friend group couldn’t even count to fifty.

Robby stared at the sugar, distinguishing each individual grain as Stebbo tried hawking people over with fake drugs. He wished he was a piece of sugar. No brain, no feelings, no sleeping in a gutter, just waiting to be eaten or cooked up and then eaten, or maybe just expire. Could sugar expire? Maybe he should ask Bobby about that.

Then, out of the blue, Robby got a bright idea.

“Stebbo!” Robby said, sitting straight up. “Is this sugar free?”

“It’s _crack_ , Robby, and-”

“Okay thanks bye!”

Robby jumped up and sprinted away before Stebbo could even decide how much the sugar should cost.

 

* * *

 

“Hi Soupy!” Robby panted, leaning against the doorframe of Soupy Sue’s Diner. Luckily, the diner was somewhat empty – the only people in there aside from him and Sue were Mrs. Strong, a kid washing dishes that Robby was eighty-seven percent sure was named Juan, Mrs. Pennywise, and a few other people Robby didn’t know too well. None of them paid much attention to Robby anyway.

“Hey there, Robby,” Soupy Sue said, looking up from her stove and grinning. It was after breakfast, so she only had two pots on the stove instead of her usual eight during rush hours. Juan, on the other hand, looked half buried in suds and soup pots.

Robby caught his breath and limped over to Sue, clutching the bag of sugar in his hand. When he was two, Robby had broken his leg playing on the rusty monkey bars at school (not his fault, the monkey bars broke). Because the hospital in the Slants was quite possibly the shittiest hospital in the universe, Robby’s leg never really healed properly, and now he had a perpetual limp. There were worse things, he supposed, but being a newsboy with a fault leg was certainly a drawback. He liked stamping expiration dates on soup cans at the K-Mart better.

“I brought you some food,” Robby said, climbing onto a barstool and dropping the bag of sugar onto her counter. It was a good amount of sugar – it filled about three quarters of the Ziploc sandwich bag. “Thought it might be good if I gave you a little something after the fiasco earlier this morning.”

Soupy Sue stared at the bag and blinked in surprise. “Is that sugar?” she asked. “Where’d you get all that?”

“Stebbo Crackson down at the carwash,” Robby explained. “He sells sugar that’s actually crack that’s actually sugar.”

“Oh.” Soupy picked the bag up. “Well, thanks Robby. How much do ya want for it?”

Robby shook his head. “Oh no, it’s free,” he said, smiling. “Just for you.”

He’d imagined her eyes shining in thankfulness, or maybe even kissing him on the cheek, but Sue just raised an eyebrow and said, “Alright then.”

Well. That… kind of backfired.

“This is actually really great for my dinner plans,” Soupy Sue said, walking back to the fridge and pulling out two giant slabs of meat wrapped in plastic wrap. “I can rub the steak in this and then chop it up for the stew tonight.”

“So… it was a good gift?” Robby asked.

Soupy smiled and rolled her eyes. “Yes Robby,” she said, “it was great. You know what, I’ll even let you have a free bowl of it tonight.”

“Wait, seriously?” he asked.

Soupy nodded and opened her mouth to say something else, but before she could get a word out, Stebbo Crackson burst through the door of the diner.

“ROBBY THE STOCKFISH YOU OWE ME TEN DOLLARS!” he shouted.

Robby groaned and slammed his head onto the counter as Soupy Sue and the rest of the diner bust out laughing.

“Robby the Stockfish?” Sue cackled. “What even is a stockfish?”

Robby sat up and glared right at Stebbo.

“Crackson,” he said, “you are so dead.”

Stebbo looked scared for a second, and then he said, “You still owe me ten dollars, Robby.”

Robby screamed in frustration and launched himself off the barstool towards Stebbo, who promptly flew out the door like a wild animal as Robby the Stockfish screamed bloody murder and chased him down the street, leaving the tilted diner far behind him along with any chance Robby might've had with Soupy Sue. God damn it. This was why living in a gutter was always a bad idea.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> i wrote this entire thing and i still don't know what a stockfish is


	11. The Worst Babysitter Known to Man

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Tiny Tom is 16, Billy Boy Bill is 11

Tiny Tom was almost positive that he was the worst babysitter known to man.

Really, the only reason he’d agreed to watching Hot Blades Harry’s little brother was because Hot Blades had promised to pay Tiny fifteen bucks, which Tiny sorely needed if he wanted to stay out of Urinetown. And if he was being honest, Billy wasn’t that bad of a kid to watch, but he was kind of a hassle when Tiny was trying to work at the 7/11.

“Billy, don’t touch that!” Tiny shouted, his arms full of soda bottles as Billy Boy Bill tried to grab a box of matches.

Billy stopped, his hand halfway to the shelf, and looked at him. “Why not?” he asked indignantly.

“Because you’ll – ack hold on.” Tiny shifted the bottles in his arms and started restocking the beverage fridge. “Because you’ll set everything on fire, that’s why. Don’t you know what matches do?”

“Of course I know what matches do!” Billy said, crossing his arms. “My brother showed me how to light a cigarette when I was five!”

“He… did?” Tiny stopped stocking and stared at Billy incredulously. “Wait, seriously?”

“Yeah, seriously!” Billy jumped up and snatched the box of matches off the shelf, stuffing it into his pocket. Tiny was just thankful he was the only one working this shift and that none of the video cameras worked – although, he was pretty sure those matches weren’t from the store anyway.

“You know what kid, whatever. Do what you want. But don’t steal anything or I’m kicking you out, got it?” Tiny Tom didn’t wait for an answer and kept stocking soda bottles until he was done. Once he finished, he shut the fridge and went back behind the counter to wait for customers. Using the mirrors in every corner of the store, he kept an eye on Billy, making sure he didn’t try to steal anything else.

The bell over the door jingled as someone let themselves in – it was Old So-and-So. Just Tiny’s luck.

“Hey! You, ginger!” Old So-and-So shouted, snapping his fingers to get Tiny’s attention. He apparently didn’t notice that Tiny was already looking straight at him. “Where can I find some beef jerky around here?”

“Beef jerky?” Tiny asked. “Don’t you have dentures?”

“Just show me where they are, ya twerp! I don’t got all day!”

Tiny rolled his eyes and started to climb off his stool, but then he heard Billy Boy yell, “Over here, Old So-and-So!”

Tiny looked over the aisles and saw Billy Boy Bill step out, hands full of beef jerky. Old So-and-So huffed and waddled over, snatching most of it out of Billy’s hands. Billy, however, didn’t stop smiling. What, was this kid high or something?

“That midget over there is doing a better job than you are, twerp,” Old So-and-So informed Tiny as he slammed the jerky onto the counter. “Now ring me up!”

“Ooh! Can I watch?” Billy asked, running behind the counter and standing on an empty crate so he could see.

Tiny could feel a headache building in his temples. He really didn’t need this.

“Fine, you can watch,” he grumbled, and proceeded to ring up Old So-and-So’s unnecessary amount of beef jerky. When he was done, he told him it was seven dollars and fifty cents, and Old So-and-So tossed him a ten-dollar coin. Tiny put the coin in the register and gave him back three dollars and fifty cents.

“Wait!” Billy said. “You should’ve only given him back two dollars!”

“What?” Tiny asked. “I know how to do math, Billy!”

That was a lie. There weren’t many reasons as to why Tiny was working at a 7/11 at the age of sixteen, but flunking out of school in both seventh and eighth grade was certainly one of them.

“No, I know I’m right! Ten minus seven and a half is two and a half.”

“But ten minus seven is three, Billy.”

“But the half makes it two!”

Tiny looked up from the argument to tell Old So-and-So to wait just a moment sir, I’ll be with you in a second, but Old So-and-So had already slipped out the door and was running across the parking lot.

“Great! There he goes,” Tiny said, watching as the old man waddled off into the twisting allies nearby. “Your little stunt just lost us a dollar, Billy Boy Bill.”

Billy stared at him. “You’re the one that gave him the extra dollar in the first place!” he yelled.

“Oh shut up and get out of the booth!”

Billy Boy stuck his tongue out at Tiny Tom before hopping off the crate and running back into the aisles. Meanwhile, Tiny continued to seethe in the booth.

 _What a little know-it-all,_ he thought. _Probably thinks he can do this job better than I can_.

After two more customers and an usurping of the cashier position, Tiny found himself sulking in the chip aisle as Billy took care of business up front.

He was never taking care of Hot Blades Harry’s little brother again.

“Hey little man!” Hot Blades said, walking into the door. The bell jingled cheerfully, and it clashed with Tiny’s mood in an unpleasant way. “Whatcha doin’ back there, huh?”

“Tiny Tom was messing stuff up, so I took over,” Billy said proudly.

 _Twerp,_ thought Tiny.

“Really?” Hot Blades laughed and looked around, spotting Tiny Tom in the third aisle. “Hey man, thanks for watching my little bro. Didn’t want him getting snagged by any cops, especially after last week.”

“Yeah, no prob,” Tiny grumbled, staring at a bag of Lays with intense hatred.

Hot Blades sniggered and helped his brother over the counter, leaving three five-dollar coins on the counter for Tiny as he left. After they were completely gone, Tiny walked over and stuffed the coins in his pocket.

Yeah, Tiny Tom was definitely the worst babysitter known to man. Especially when the baby was smarter than him.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This takes place a week after the Playground Raid chapters, just in case you were wondering. >:)


	12. Pranks, Blades, and Shoes

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Hot Blades is 13, Becky is 11, Bobby is 10, and Robby is 9

Becky was so happy she had a crush on a genius.

Who was this crush? Only Harrison Batter, also known as Hot Blades Harry. Even though he was thirteen and Becky was eleven, they had to share the same classroom at school since they could only afford to pay for a fifth of the teachers they needed. And Little Becky Two Shoes couldn’t have asked for anything better.

Not only was Harry handsome, oh no. He was also _smart_ – he helped Becky out with her multiplication tables one time! Sure, he’d gotten help from Bobby Strong first, but still. Very smart. Plus, he had a _knife._ Little Becky had _always_ wanted a knife. Too bad her mom wouldn’t let her though.

The best part though? Hot Blades Harry actually TALKED TO HER. Holy crap! Hot Blades Harry, talking to Becky? It was a dream come true. All her friends said it was because she was really pretty and dressed like a punk ballerina – well, both of those were certainly true – but Becky knew that Harry just liked spending time with her. She’d gotten Robby, the little sneak that never said anything, to go spy on him and tell her what he said about her after giving him a piece of old taffy that Ma Strong had given her. He came back telling her that Harry had told Bobby that he _liked_ her. Hot Blades Harry _liked Little Becky?_ She felt like she was floating for the rest of the day.

Her favorite about Hot Blades though came when Becky was getting picked on by their teacher, Mrs. Scott. Everyone hated Mrs. Scott – she was super strict and condescending, and she obviously picked favorites, in which Becky was never included. This time, Becky had forgotten to do her homework again – but who even cared about stupid books anyway? – and Mrs. Scott started yelling at her in front of the whole class. But then Harry had stood up and told Mrs. Scott to pick on someone her own size! He was like a knight in shining armor. Except he kind of got them both sent outside.

“I’ll make her pay,” Hot Blades seethed, pacing back and forth in the hallway. “She can’t do that to people. I’ll make her pay, just watch!”

“Aw Hot Blades, don’t get yourself in trouble over me,” Little Becky said, leaning against the wall in her ruffled pink tutu. “She’s the teacher, she’ll do whatever she wants.”

“But she shouldn’t! I won’t let her do that to you.”

Becky blushed brighter than her tutu. Had he really just said that?

Hot Blades smashed his fist into his hand. “I’m gonna get her so bad she’ll never teach again,” he growled. Then his face lit up, and he turned to Becky with that evil glint in his eyes. “I know!” he said. “Let’s prank her!”

Becky looked right at Harry, her eyes wide in excitement. “Prank her?” she asked. “How?”

“I dunno,” he admitted, “but I’ll get Bobby in on it. He’ll figure somethin’ out. Hey, and we could use Robby too – he’s a little sneak, that kid.”

“Yeah!” Becky said, beaming. Then Hot Blades took both her hand and stared at her.

“Let’s make her pay, Becky,” he told her. His eyes were sparkling mischievously and his grin was hypnotic. “You and me. Let’s make her pay!”

Becky was surprised she didn’t melt right through the floor.

 

* * *

 

 

That afternoon, Hot Blades Harry, Little Becky Two Shoes, Bobby Strong, and Robby all met in the only movie theater in the Slants. Becky had bribed Robby with some more taffy, and Harry had briefed Bobby on what it is they were gonna be doing beforehand, so the four of them sat in the back of the movie theater, hiding from the workers and passing around a bowl of stolen and burnt popcorn, and began plotting.

“So,” Bobby whispered, “I was thinkin’ that if you wanted to do something big, we could mess with her mind a little. You know?”

“How do ya mean?” asked Hot Blades. “Like, a lotobamy?”

“It’s lobotomy, Harry,” Bobby corrected.

“Do I give a shit? Just tell me what ya mean.”

Bobby rolled his eyes. “What I mean,” he continued, “is that we should do something that’ll make her so scared that she won’t teach in her life ever again.”

“Well, what should we do then?” Becky asked.

Bobby shrugged and said, “I dunno, you guys are the ones that thought this up. What are things that freak you out?”

“Ghosts!” Robby shouted, and we all turned to shush him before the movie crew came and found us.

“Sorry!” he whispered. “I meant ghosts. Ghosts freak me out.”

“And how the hell does that help?” Harry asked, smacking Robby on the forehead. “How the hell do you think we’re getting a ghost from?”

“Wait!” Becky hissed. She had an idea. “We don’t need an _actual_ ghost, Harry, we just need to make her _think_ there’s a ghost!”

“Or a lot of ghosts,” Bobby added. “Oh, I have an idea! Let’s get the whole class and all of us pretend we’re possessed by ghosts! And we do scary things like scream all at the same time and stand up and stare at her without doing anything.”

“Or! Or! How about when she comes in one day, there’s an evil message on the chalkboard written in blood!” Robby said, getting excited again. “Except it won’t be real blood, it’ll just be syrup with red in it.”

“And what if we start spreading rumors about evil ghosts in the school that possess children to kill bad teachers? That’d be really great!” Becky added.

“Oh hell yeah,” Harry said, rubbing his hands together. “You guys can sure as hell think up some damn good prank ideas. Say, how abouts we start with Becky’s idea, and then we slowly all do weird things like stare at her for a little too long or all of us stand up at the same time, and then one day she comes in and sees the blood message and then when she starts yelling at us, we all stand up and just scream at her and she gets super freaked out, and then the lights get cut and we keep screaming until the principal comes, and then we all sit in our chairs like normal like nothing happened. How’s that idea?”

“That’ll get her to leave for sure!” Becky said excitedly. “Wow Harry, you’re really good at this!”

He winked at her and said, “One of my many talents.”

Becky was glad the movie theater was so dark; otherwise all of them would’ve seen her blushing bright red.

“So, is that the plan?” Bobby asked. He’d been writing it all down – what a nerd. Becky wondered why Harry even put up with him.

Harry nodded, grinning. “Yep, that’s the plan,” he said. “Becky and I’ll get everyone to play along. Robby can get the red syrup. Bobby, you can figure out how to cut the room power. We good?”

“Yeah!” all of them shouted before slapping our hands over their mouths. The damage was done though – a few seconds later, the cashier boy came in holding a broom and yelled at all the kids to get out. They all ran out as fast as they could, but Becky didn’t care about getting in trouble. She, and the rest of them, had an evil plan to carry out.

 

* * *

 

Getting everyone in Becky’s class to play along wasn’t too hard – everyone hated Mrs. Scott already. Now that Becky and Harry had a good idea that involved getting her kicked out or quitting, everyone jumped in. Well, except a few brownnoses, but Harry beat them into shape real quick.

After that, they put their plan into action. Becky told everyone in the grade the story about a classroom of kids that were so bad, their teacher poisoned all their lunches and they all died! But when she didn’t get in trouble, the kids’ ghosts all came back and killed her by forcing her to fit inside a desk! Now they roamed the school, possessing kids and the occasional dysfunctional water fountain, killing bad teachers that no one liked. It was a good story – Becky mostly came up with it on her own, but it became super detailed and a lot better as it spread around.

After about a week, the teachers finally caught wind of the story and called a school meeting to say that none of the story was true, but Becky could tell that a few of the teachers were kinda freaked out. They probably knew they were the bad ones. Luckily for them, Becky only wanted to get rid of one bad teacher.

Once Mrs. Scott heard the story, Harry and Becky organized a ton of creepy things for the kids to do. On Monday, they were all taking a stupid vocab test, and when the clock hit nine o’ clock they all sat straight up and stared at Mrs. Scott for ten full seconds. When she noticed, she flipped out, and it was super hard for Becky not to start laughing.

“What are you doing?” she asked frantically. “Go back to your work!”

They all kept staring at her until ten seconds passed, and then the all went back down and kept taking their tests. Becky could see Mrs. Scott looking terrified out of the corner of her eye.

 _Our evil plan is working_ , she thought happily.

Another time, Becky saw Bobby hand in a worksheet to Mrs. Scott and stare right at her and say, “The children are coming,” in a really monotonous tone. Then, he blinked, shook his head, and left. Mrs. Scott looked really freaked out.

After a few more instances like this, Harry figured it was time to bring out the corn syrup. Robby had stolen a bottle of corn syrup and some red food dye from the K-Mart – his mom worked there – and that night he and Harry snuck in and wrote a message on the chalkboard. When Becky and the rest of the class (none of whom had known about the message earlier) came in that day, they all gasped in horror and immediately looked at Mrs. Scott, who seemed to have grown ten shades paler.

The message read “YOUR NEXT,” and it was dripping down the chalkboard and had ruined the eraser. Mrs. Scott quickly called for the school’s only janitor to clean it off before beginning class.

The next day was the big kicker.

Becky and Harry told everyone about the plan in the schoolyard before they went into class. Bobby had found a way to shut off the power in just Mrs. Scott’s classroom for ten seconds and then turn it back on, but he had to be down in the boiler room. He could listen through the vents so he would know when to turn it off and on again, and when he came back he’d act like he’d been in the bathroom.

When Becky came into class and sat down, everyone was bouncing in their seats, excited about their newest and most terrifying prank. Mrs. Scott looked hilariously shaken up – Becky hoped she’d be so scared her heart stopped after this prank.

Finally, a few minutes before lunch, Bobby asked to go to the bathroom and left the class.

“He’s going to the boiler room,” Harry whispered to Becky. “He’ll bang on the vent when he’s ready.”

A minute later, a faint bang on the vent that could only have been heard by Becky and Harry (they were the ones sitting next to it) sounded. Harry locked eyes with everyone and nodded. It was time.

As one, the entire class stood up and turned to Mrs. Scott, who looked up from her book and nearly fell back into the wall.

“What do you think you’re doing!” she screamed. “Get back in your seats!”

Then, Becky and the rest of the class inhaled and screamed at the top of their lungs.

Mrs. Scott’s eyes got so wide with fear that they looked like frog eyes. When the lights turned off, Becky heard her scream and try to flick them on again, but it didn’t work. Then, after nine seconds of darkness, Harry and Becky stopped screaming and sat down, causing everyone else to follow, and when the lights came back up, all the kids were back in their seats, doing their assigned reading.

Mrs. Scott was hyperventilating behind her desk.

“Are you alright, Mrs. Scott?” one of the other kids asked. When she didn’t answer, Becky and Harry looked at each other and just went back to their reading. It took so much self-control for Becky to not burst out laughing.

The next day, there was a first period meeting for the whole school with the principal. He told all the students that Mrs. Scott, the general teacher for grades 4th-6th, had retired from teaching, and that the students who were in her class could go home for the day since they still hadn’t found a substitute to replace her.

Once Mrs. Scott’s class had left the building, everyone erupted into cheers of joy. All the kids started hugging and screaming and running around like they were insane. Bobby and Robby high-fived and Hot Blades Harry lifted Becky up and spun her around, laughing.

“We did it!” he yelled. “We did it Becky Two Shoes! We got rid of Mrs. Scott!”

“Hell yeah!” Becky shouted, throwing her fists in the air. “We did it!”

And as Harry spun her around in the schoolyard, surrounded by cheering kids and knowing that their evil prank had succeeded, Becky felt like she knew exactly what true happiness felt like.


	13. Playground Raid (part 1)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Little Sally is 9, Billy Boy Bill is 11

“The cops are comin’!”

I looked up from the book I was reading in shock as the kid who’d yelled the announcement ran down the hall to warn the other kids. Cops? Coming _here?_ It was almost ten o’clock! Plus, the last time cops had raided the Playground was when I was four, just before Officer Lockstock got in charge. Why were they doing it now?

“Little Sally!” Billy Boy shouted over by the window. Billy didn’t live in the Playground like most of the kids – he lived with his brother in the Gang Clubhouse. Since the place was so close to the Playground, he’d been keeping me company. Normally, I’d live in the Public Library, but it had a serious rat problem right now. Hannah, the nice trainee cop, had promised to fix it for me a few days ago, but she told me I shouldn’t stay there with all the rats in case I got bitten. I probably wouldn’t have stayed there anyway though – one of the rats had almost taken a chunk out of my arm one night, and those things were _huge._

Now I was wondering if it would’ve been better to stay in the Library anyway.

“What? What is it?” I asked, leaving my book and Rosie Franklin, my toy bunny, on the ground as I ran over to the window. When I saw what Billy had been seeing, I knew why he’d called me over.

There were tons and tons of cops down there. Like, a lot more than I’d even thought were in Slants. A lot of them were officers, but I could see a few trainees and some cops with fancier uniforms too. And every single one of them had their flashlights on and was walking towards the Playground to trap us.

There was only one police base in the Slants, but that police base was for all the cops this side of the riverbed. Each Amenity in the Slants (#9, #15, and #32) all had their own squad, although P-9’s was the smallest since it only had two officers and seven trainees. That was the one with Officer Lockstock and Hannah. From what I could tell, almost every single cop in the Slants was here, including what looked like…

“Is that the police chief from the rich side of town?” Billy asked, looking down into the approaching blue and black mob. “What’s he doing here?”

“Maybe he’s supervising it,” I said, still searching. “Hey, I can’t see Officer Lockstock or Hannah anywhere!”

Billy looked at me. “You mean those cops that you’re friends with?” he asked. I nodded.

“Maybe they’re back guarding the base since all the other cops are here,” he told me.

“But what if they got fired?” I asked.

“They wouldn’t fire Officer Lockstock, he’s their best cop.”

“Oh, yeah I guess you’re right.”

Billy put his arm over my shoulders, which helped calm me down a little. I had a hard time thinking straight when I was scared, especially without Officer Lockstock, but Billy was good at it. Probably because he was always doing illegal things anyway. Sometimes I wished I was as street smart as him, but I knew that he wished he was as book smart as me. Billy was probably my best friend aside from Hannah the trainee and Officer Lockstock.

“Guys!” one of the kids shouted behind us. It was Juan. “We gotta get outta here, the cops are gonna charge!”

Billy Boy tried to say something, but a loud roll of thunder drowned him out. When the thunder didn’t stop, I realized it wasn’t thunder – it was police boots.

Billy and I looked at each other.

“Oh no,” he said.

I scooped up my bunny and Billy grabbed my book, and together we ran as fast as we could to the stairs. We weren’t fast enough though – by the time we got to them, cops were already pounding past the fourth floor. Since we were on the fifth (all the buildings in the Playground were five stories or less, not counting the basements), we had enough time to run back through the rooms and find a fire escape to climb down.

“Hurry!” I shouted, jumping through the window onto the fire escape. Billy Boy Bill followed me as quickly as he could and shut the window before turning to the other building. Both buildings were tilted, so we could reach the fire escape on the other building if we jumped. Then, maybe we could get up onto the roofs or escape through the sewers.

I hugged Rosie Franklin and threw her onto the other fire escape, and Billy did the same with his book. Then he took my hand and squeezed it before taking a running leap over the gap and landing squarely on the other fire escape. When he turned, his eyes focused on something behind me and widened in fear.

“Sally, hurry!” he shouted, just before a loud crash of glass sounded behind me. I shrieked and covered my head on instinct, but when I looked up, a policeman grabbed me by the arm and yanked me away from the edge.

“Little Sally!” Billy Boy shouted.

The policeman raised his baton, and I automatically kicked him right in the shin. He howled in pain and I yanked my arm away, making a running leap to the other building and scooping up my bunny.

“Hurry!” I said, jumping through the open window. Billy followed close behind, with the cursing policeman hot on our heels.

When we hit the hallway, the mad rush of kids separated us instantly. I tried to reach for Billy’s hand, but he was shoved too far down the hall too fast. And then, to make matters worse, someone grabbed the back of my shirt and pulled me into a room.

“Ah!” I shouted, landing on my back in the dust. Over me stood… wait, I knew him! He was one of the P-9 trainees!

“Well, if it ain’t Little Sally,” the guy said, his curly gold hair bouncing as he smirked down at me. “Looks like you’ve been hanging with the wrong crowd lately.”

I scooted backwards, realizing quickly that he wasn’t one of the nice trainees. “Aren’t you Felix?” I asked. “You’re one of the P-9 trainees.”

“Fast Foot, actually,” someone said behind me. I whipped around and came face to face with another P-9 trainee, only this one was much taller and had dark hair with a tiny pencil mustache. “Named so because he’s the fasted soon-to-be cop on the force. I wouldn’t try outrunning him.”

I tried to scramble up and get away, but the dark haired one – I think it was Tiles – grabbed me before I could. He was a lot stronger than I thought he’d be.

“Let go of me!” I shouted, struggling and kicking, but Tiles and Felix were too fast. “Let go!”

“Aw, is that a bunny?” Felix snatched Rosie Franklin out of my hands and held it up to look at it. “Adorable.”

“Hey, give that back!” I tried to grab it, but Tiles pulled me back by both arms. “Give me back Rosie Franklin!”

“Rosie Franklin?” Tiles said. “Who’d you name her after, your dead mom?”

“No, I named her after Rosalind Franklin. She helped discover the structure of DNA with Watson and Crick.”

Both the trainees stopped and stared at me like I’d grown an extra head.

“How’d you know that?” Tiles asked. “You’re like ten!”

“I’m nine, and I know so because I _read_. Now give me back my bunny!”

Felix just cackled and shook it in front of my face, smirking. I was really starting to hate this guy.

“Hey assjerk!”

Something hard hit Felix in the back of the head, and he whipped around, pulling out his baton. Billy Boy Bill stood in the doorway, a rock in one hand, glaring at Felix with the intensity of a thousand burning suns.

“Pick on someone your own size!” Billy shouted.

Tiles snorted, and Felix asked, “What, like you? Yeah right kid.”

Then Billy narrowed his eyes and threw the rock at him.

It hit Felix square on the nose, and I heard something crack. Tiles let go of me to grab his baton and shouted, “Why you little-!” before I spun around and kicked him right in the crotch. He howled and dropped to the ground as I leaped over Felix, who was also on the ground clutching his nose, grabbed my bunny, and ran out the door with Billy.

“Thanks!” I shouted over the sirens and screams as we tore down the hallway.

“No prob!” he yelled back. “Now come on, let’s get out of here.”

We turned the corner to go down the stairs and slammed right into another cop, sending all three of us crashing to the floor. As Billy and I scrambled up, we noticed that the cop we’d crashed into had a much fancier uniform than the others.

It took me about half a second to realize _oh shitake mushrooms that’s the freaking police chief._

“Billy run!” I shouted, grabbing his hand and pulling him, but the chief grabbed Billy’s leg and yanked him back, pinning him down on the ground as he stood up.

“Billy!” I screamed.

“Sally, go!” he shouted back.

The chief hauled Billy up as more cops pounded up the stairs, and I realized I had no choice. I sprinted down the hall and ducked into an empty room, hands shaking as I peeked out to make sure they didn’t hurt him.

“Let go of me!” Billy Boy shouted, trying to jerk away. “Let me go! You can’t do this!”

“Shut up!” one of the cops yelled, kicking him in the stomach. I could see all the air get knocked out of him and he slumped forward, eyes bulging in panic as he tried to breathe.

“Here,” the police chief said, shoving Billy at the cop that’d just kicked him. “Take him to the west building with the others. The rest of you, do a final sweep of the other buildings. I’ve got this one.”

There were a bunch of “yes sirs” and head nods before the cops left, one of them dragging Billy Boy Bill down the stairs. When the chief glanced down the hallway towards me, I immediately ducked back in and covered my mouth so I wouldn’t make noise.

Oh no, oh no, oh no, oh no. How was I supposed to get Billy out of this? I couldn’t take on an entire police force! Not alone, at least. But I had a feeling that asking Billy’s brother to help would end up with people dead, and I _really_ didn’t want that.

A creaking floorboard interrupted my thoughts, reminding me that I still wasn’t alone in this godforsaken building.

“I know you’re here, Sally,” the chief said, the floor groaning under his weight. As quietly as I could, I crept away from the doorway and looked around for an exit. Aside from a boarded up window in the back of the room, there wasn’t one. Just perfect.

“Come out, come out, Little Sally,” he sang. “I promise I won’t hurt you.”

 _Yeah right,_ I thought, creeping towards the back of the room, where it was darker. Then I remembered he had a flashlight on him, making this completely useless.

“Oh Little Sally…” The police chief was really creeping me out. I hugged Rosie Franklin to my chest, looking for something, anything, to get me out of this, but I couldn’t see a thing. I was trapped.

Then his flashlight beam pierced the room and landed right on me, and I tried to run but he leaped forward and grabbed me by the back of my neck and pulled me back. I clawed at his hand, holding my bunny as tightly as I could, but he was too strong. Why were all these policemen so strong?

Or maybe I was just weak. That was probably more likely.

“Wow, look at you,” the chief said as I kept struggling. “You really are adorable. I’m not surprised Theodore took such a liking to you.”

Theodore? “Who’s Theodore?” I asked, glaring up at him.

“Theodore Lockstock,” he replied. “He’s always had a soft spot for children, don’t you think?”

He was talking about Officer Lockstock!

“Well,” the police chief continued, “children do have a way of worming themselves into everyone’s hearts. But Theo’s soft spot is just a little _too_ soft. I think it’d be better if we closed it up a little, don’t you?”

“Why the hell do you keep asking for my opinion?” I asked, gritting my teeth.

The police chief spun me around and grabbed the front of my shirt, pulling me into his face and shining the flashlight right into my eyes. “Because you, Sally Cassidy,” he said, “are going to be the first little orphan sent off to Urinetown tonight.”

My eyes widened. Was that what the raid was for? Getting rid of the orphan kids?

He let go of the front of my shirt and stuck his finger in my face, grinning evilly. “Maybe, after that happens, Theodore Lockstock will finally start acting like a decent police officer. Imagine that.”

I then made the stupendous choice of almost biting his finger clean off.

The police chief screamed and tried to smack me with his flashlight, but I let go of his finger and ducked under his arm, slipped through his legs, and ran out into the hallway. He cursed and sprinted after me, but I was faster and smaller and knew my way around better. Without crowds of kids and cops everywhere, I easily lost him in under a minute.

I eventually ended up on the first floor under the stairwell, my chest heaving as the police chief ran down the stairs and went outside. It took me a moment to realize my hands were shaking; I hugged Rosie Franklin to my chest to calm me down.

 _Think, Little Sally, think!_ I told myself. _They’re gonna take Billy Boy and everyone else off to Urinetown if you don’t do something!_

And then I saw four bottles of Axe spray in someone’s room and knew that hope wasn’t completely lost. Not yet, anyway.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> >:]


	14. Playground Raid (part 2)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Little Sally is 9, Billy Boy Bill is 11, Bobby is 19

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> *evil laughter*

I really hoped that the kids I was stealing from wouldn’t mind me taking their stuff, but since I was probably saving their lives, I figured they’d have to forgive me. If they didn’t, well then they were just ungrateful.

I was just worried that the cops wouldn’t be in the building anymore, or that I was too late.

I’d taken a backpack from someone’s room and emptied it into a cardboard box, then stuffed all my rescuing supplies into it. I put Rosie Franklin in too so she wouldn’t get in the way, but she got her own pocket.

In my overall dress pockets I had three boxes of matches and a thick rag. You’ll see why in a second.

I sprinted up the stairs and got up on the roof, immediately climbing up onto one of the broken air conditioning units. From there, I could easily see where the cops had taken everyone; it was a building on the west side of the Playground, full of flashlight beams and surrounded by red and blue sirens.

Thankfully, I had a quick and easy way over there.

Like all the other buildings in the Slants, all the buildings in the Playground were slanted and leaned into one another for support. Most of them were so haphazardly tilted that people had moved out of them almost immediately, leaving them free to be used by anyone. This said, you could get to just about every building in the Playground by jumping from roof to roof. When they were too far from one another, kids had nailed planks or other things down as bridges.

This made my job ten times easier.

I ran as fast as I could to the west building, jumping over gaps between buildings and running across planks. It took me barely two minutes to get over to the west building’s roof.

As quickly as I could, I ran over to the roof access door (now doorway, since the door was gone) and slipped quietly down the stairs. Like all buildings in the Playground, this one had an open stairwell, which I’d been counting on. Hopefully, this would still work.

There were kids and cops on every floor, but this building only had three floors. As quietly as possible, I unzipped my backpack and pulled out four soda cans filled with Axe-sprayed paper – or as I liked to call them, homemade smoke bombs. There’d been enough axe and spare supplies to make almost thirty. That was plenty enough to fill the entire building with smoke.

I’d broken a hole in the bottom of every bomb, which was supposed to be for lighting the Axe paper on fire. Staying out of sight, I pulled out a match and struck it against the wall, then set fire to all four cans through the bottom hole before chucking them down into the stairwell. Each one landed on a different level, and I immediately pulled out more.

“What the hell?” I heard some of the cops yell. Before anyone could move, I threw five more smoking cans into the third floor, filling it up with smoke.

Kids and cops started yelling, but then one kid finally yelled, “RUN! EVERYBODY RUN!” and set off a mass exodus for the windows, fire escapes, and various other escape routes that’d been built into this building by hundreds of criminal kids. Meanwhile, I ran down the stairs throwing more smoke bombs into the second and first floors. Smoke filled the entire building, sending everyone into a frenzy as kids escaped and cops panicked.

“Billy!” I shouted, trying to find him. This entire plan had been to help him escape – where was he? “Billy! Where are you?”

“Sally!” I heard him shout. “Third floor!”

I used up the rest of my smoke cans just to keep things muddled and ran up the stairs, dodging between cops and kids as they struggled to see in the smoke. The smoke was starting to sting my eyes, and I covered my mouth with the rag in my pocket to keep from coughing. No one paid attention to me though – one of the few perks of being a little girl was that no one ever thought of you as a criminal mastermind.

“Billy!” I yelled, finally reaching the third floor. “Billy, where are you?”

“Here!” he shouted, and I could just make him out before he grabbed my arm and pulled me into a run for the window. “Come on, hurry!”

We ran to the open window and jumped out screaming, and we somehow landed on the fire escape of the next building. My heart raced as we flew down the stairs and onto the street, sprinting away from the Playground as fast as our feet could carry us.

There was a police perimeter set up, but it was mostly manned by trainees, and the mad rush of kids caused most all of them to panic. We easily slipped through and ran into one of the many back alleys near the Playground, but pounding police boots followed.

“This way!” Billy shouted, tugging me down another alley, and then another, but as we turned into the third, we slammed into someone and knocked him to the ground. As we scrambled up, I was half afraid that it’d be the police chief again, but it wasn’t – it was Bobby Strong.

“Ow!” he shouted, landing on his back. “What the- Billy? Little Sally? What are you-”

The police boots got louder as cops closed in. There wasn’t time for this.

“Bobby!” I hissed. “We aren’t here!” Then I grabbed Billy’s hand and pulled him behind a trash pile, crawling into it so we could hide.

And not a moment too soon, because barely two seconds later, cops filled they alleyway.

“You there!” one of them shouted. As Billy and I peeked out from the trash pile, I saw Officer shining his flashlight into Bobby’s face. “Did you see any kids run by here? A boy and a girl?”

“No, why?” Bobby asked, shading his face. I recognized Tiles and Felix (Felix had a bandage over his nose and blood smeared on his left cheek) searching the alley with their flashlights – they even looked inside the bin across from us but passed right over the trash pile.

“There was a crackdown on block sixteen today,” Officer Barrel said, narrowing his eyes at Bobby. “One of the kids built smoke bombs and a lot of them escaped. We’re just searching for stragglers.”

“What are you driving orphans out of their homes for?” Bobby asked frantically, but Barrel didn’t answer.

“They aren’t here, Officer Barrel!” Felix shouted from the other end of the alley. “They must’ve run off to another ally. Should we go look for them?”

Barrel glared at Bobby for a few more seconds before clicking off his flashlight. “No,” he said, “they’re long gone by now. Let’s report back.”

“Chief Reese won’t be too happy if he finds out we lost the Cassidy girl,” Tiles said. My heart skipped a beat – that was _me._

Barrel clenched his jaw and turned away. “Let’s just get out of here,” he snapped before walking down the alley. Tiles and Felix shared a look before following him out.

As soon as they were gone, Bobby’s entire body relaxed. Billy and I popped out of the trash pile, garbage still sticking to us or sitting on our heads.

“Thanks Bobby,” I said, picking a banana peel off my head.

He slowly unclenched his fists and turned to me, smiling. “No problem,” he said. “Hey, you guys can come to my place to lie low until the cops stop crawling everywhere. It’s just around the corner.”

“Really?” I said. “Oh gee, thanks Bobby! Come on Billy.”

I climbed out of the pile and brushed myself off, but Billy didn’t budge.

“Billy?” I asked. “What’s wrong?”

“Harry…” Billy Boy Bill bit his lip. “Harry told me I wasn’t allowed to talk to him.” He was staring at Bobby.

I glanced at Bobby Strong and then back at him. “Bobby just saved our lives, Billy,” I said. “And I’m sure your brother won’t mind if he’s keeping us safe.”

Billy looked between the two of us, chewing his lip, but he eventually climbed out of the trash pile and followed Bobby and me out of the alley. Thank god; I didn’t want to leave Billy Boy alone with cops everywhere.

It only took us a few minutes to get to Bobby’s house from the alley. Once we got there though, Old Ma Strong took us in and completely babied us. She checked again and again to make sure we weren’t hurt and used the stove to heat up leftovers from Soupy Sue’s, all the while cursing the cops and how they had no right to do this. Bobby just sat with us at the table, smiling and rolling his eyes whenever his mom nagged us about being okay. His dad was already asleep upstairs.

“Where’d you even learn how to make a smoke bomb?” Bobby asked after I explained how everyone had escaped.

“I live in the Slants, Bobby,” I told him. “You tend to pick up things like that here.”

“She has a point,” his mom said by the stove, stirring Soupy’s sludge in a small pan.

“Still, it was totally awesome,” Billy Boy Bill said. “The entire place filled up with smoke. She saved like everyone!”

I grinned in pride and pretended not to blush.

“Oh yeah!” I said, suddenly remembering. I slipped off the backpack on my shoulders and put it on the table, pulling out Rosie Franklin before shoving towards Bobby.

“Here ya go, Bobby,” I told him. “You can have it, since you saved us an all. There’s a screwdriver in it too.”

Bobby stared at the bag in surprise before saying, “Oh, alright thanks,” and putting it on the floor next to him.

“Here you go, kids,” Old Ma Strong said, putting down four bowls of soup. Well… they weren’t in bowls, exactly. Bobby and Billy’s were in plastic containers, Old Ma Strong’s was in a jar, and mine was in a big coffee mug. But it tasted just as great as would’ve been at Soupy’s – maybe even better, but that was probably just because we’d escaped going to Urinetown.

Bobby and his Ma let us sleep on the couch after dinner, and the next morning Billy Boy left to go back to the hideout. I, on the other hand, got to go with Bobby to Amenity Number Nine and hang out since both my homes were a little to dysfunctional for me to go back. There, Mrs. Pennywise told us that the Playground raid last night, according to the authorities, hadn’t been authorized, and that Chief Reese had been fired. I was really happy about that.

When Billy and his brother came up the amenity line, I fist bumped Billy and saw Hot Blades give Bobby a little nod. As he and Bobby had been sort-of enemies since Hot Blades Harry beat him up in an alley two years ago, Billy and I knew that was probably the closest thing to “thank you” Bobby was gonna get.

Who knew, maybe something good might come out of last night’s raid after all.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> http://explosives.wonderhowto.com/how-to/make-a-smoke-bomb-from-common-household-items-367245/


	15. One Hell of a Dry Spell

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Pennywise is 27, Cladwell is 28

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Written for the lovely Marina, who suggested I do something for Pennywise and Cladwell. I 'hope' you enjoy!
> 
> (that was a pun. please laugh at my pun)

The drought had been going on for two years, and if the millions of reports from across the globe and every sort of resource imaginable were anything to go by, it was pretty damn unlikely that it would stop any time soon.

It’d taken about two months for the full on drought to reach my town. Once it did though, nothing save a miracle could’ve pulled the town out of its insanity. Gangs formed overnight. Crime rates quadrupled within four days. And the streets? Full of riots, orphans, and the excrement of the entire city. Toilets had broken down barely a day after the drought hit, leaving everyone to do their business in whatever place they could. Even two years after all this, only a few souls dared to brave the streets.

In case it wasn’t obvious, I was one of them.

There were no jobs, no opportunities, no tomorrows. Every day might be your last. It was about this time that I finally lost hope, or at least enough hope to make me truly desperate. I was a starving young woman with no family and no friends, not strong enough to fight and not skilled enough to steal, living in what seemed like the end of the world. Honestly, I’m surprised it took me as long as it did to get into the sex business.

It wasn’t really that bad, at least not at first. I started out on the street, like everyone does, selling myself like a package of meat to whatever greedy, barbaric soul wanted me that night. In exchange I got food and a place to sleep, however shitty that place might be. Eventually though, I moved up the ranks. People started suggesting me, praising my skill – well, that amount of practice has got to make anyone good enough, right? I got a job at a strip club, and then a bar, and then a classy establishment that served cheap wine in expensive bottles and clothed its labor in faux fur and sequins. The answer as to how it stayed in business came in the form of its patrons: rich, frivolous young people, wasting their riches away while they still could on drinks, drugs, and pleasure. I made a lot of money in those days.

Then disaster struck. An enormous earthquake rocked the town and brought down the entire north side of the river. My job and my clients were gone, and the places left were all shanties and slants, piled on top of one another and leaning about like drunken sailors. So I went back to the streets. And stayed there.

A few months later, I met Caldwell.

Caldwell’s family had been a part of that social circle that frequented my workplace before the earthquake. I’d never seen him, let alone worked with him, but I knew of him. Vaguely. When the earthquake hit, his fortunes were gone and most of his family were dead. Whatever remained collapsed in the despair that followed, of losing what separated them from the masses. But Caldwell, he didn’t lose hope. He didn’t lie down in the dust and wish for the tomorrows to end. He got back up and started fighting. He was a survivor. Similar, he would say, to me.

 

* * *

 

 

The first time I saw him, I remember it as raining ash. One of the last factories near the river had exploded, killing its workers and sending a cloud of ash into the sky that rained down like poisoned snow. _Just like Pompeii,_ I thought, happy I could remember even that much of my education. _The world had ended for them when ash rained from the sky. Maybe this is a sign._

It was a sign, just not the sign I’d imagined.

Caldwell B. Cladwell entered my sight in the early morning, one or two o’clock, and I remember him picking me first. He brought me back to his bare hotel room, paid me in cash, and we spent the night without much talk. But in the morning, we did talk. I don’t remember who began the conversation first. Somehow, we ended up talking about living alone and making do, about missing tomorrows and wasting lives. I remember he chuckled after that, slipping on his coat.

“This is one hell of a dry spell,” he said. Then he tipped his hat and slipped through the door.

 _Dry spell,_ I thought. _That’s putting it pretty lightly._

Then I realized that was probably what he meant.

He frequented me after that. We’d spend the night in silence, and we’d spend the morning in chatter. One day I taught him how to make eggs – he’d never made anything for himself really, since his staff usually took care of it – and after that he’d make me eggs and burnt bacon every morning. He’d tell me of his plans for the future, how he would save this town, and every town, once he figured out how. He said he wanted to save the world before people got used to smelling feces all the time and bathing in coffee cups and fighting over the right to survive. Caldwell would say a lot of things. But he never really did follow up on them.

Three months after we first met, I discovered I was pregnant.

A month after that, I told him it was his. I had little doubt that I was right, but you can never really know in my line of work.

The next five months, I saw something change in Caldwell. He no longer made empty promises and spoke of lavish, impossible ideas. We stayed together in his cheap hotel room, and he got a job to support us both, and he started pulling strings. They were small strings, barely even noticeable, but the impact they made would slap me in the face in the years to come. Caldwell B. Cladwell was not a stupid man – in fact, he was one of the smartest I’d ever known.

We didn’t have enough to deliver the baby at the hospital, so we delivered her in the room, using the advice and supplies given to us by people made penniless by the drought, and people who were penniless before it. She was a beautiful baby, healthy and happy, full of life and hope.

“Hope?” Caldwell said with a smile. He was the happiest I’d ever seen him. “Well, let’s name her that then. Hope Penelope Cladwell.”

“Hope? Really?” I told him. “Do you have any idea how many puns can be made with that kind of name? We better prepare ourselves.”

The light in his eyes dimmed just slightly at my last statement, but it rekindled just as quickly, and I brushed it aside, assuming it to be nothing.

Oh, how wrong I was.

“Hope Cladwell it is, then,” he said with a wink. His arms enveloped us both in a hug, and I could feel his heartbeat against my own. “Our own little miracle.”

I realized then that Hope was more of a miracle than anything I’d ever dreamed, because for the first time since the earthquake, Caldwell B. Cladwell finally had something to fight for.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> yes i realize that the ages and years here don't make the drought exactly twenty years but let's get real they were probably saying twenty years to just keep it simple it was probably like idk 23 or 24 years long pLEASE DONT HATE ME OKAY IM TRYING


	16. Operation Rob the K-Mart

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Hot Blades is 18, Becky is 17, Bobby is 16, Robby is 14, Tiny and Stebbo are 13, Anita is 12, Billy is 8, and Sally is 6

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> From Anita Moore's point of view

I’m not sure why Hot Blades Harry decided that stealing from literally the _biggest store in the entire Slants_ was a good cure for boredom, but the point is he did, and because the entire gang was expected to follow every whim and fancy of our oh-so-glorious knife-wielding leader, this was the exact reason for me standing near one of K-Mart’s loading docks at twelve fifty AM.

Can you tell I wasn’t excited? I wasn’t excited.

“Hot Blades, this really isn’t a good idea,” Bobby Strong said. I rolled my eyes and made a gagging sound, which no one noticed. Bobby and I’s rivalry had existed since the dawn of man – the fact that he was four years older than me was irrelevant.

“What, are you chickening out?” Hot Blades asked, squaring his shoulders and turning to face Bobby. Being the wimp that he is, Bobby huffed and turned away, not answering.

“You know,” I interrupted, “I hate to agree with the sleezeball over there, but I don’t really want to get arrested for trying to steal from the biggest store in the entire Slants, Hot Blades.”

“Shut up kid, you’re like twelve!” he snapped.

I opened my mouth to argue, but then I realized I couldn’t and shut my mouth in annoyance.

“Anyone else want to chicken out?” he asked threateningly, whipping around with his knife in hand. Well, no one would now, not with _that_ look on his face. Sometimes I seriously wondered if joining Hot Blades Harry’s gang was really best idea for my career as a street urchin.

When no one answered, Hot Blades said, “Good,” and pointed his knife at Robby. “Go pick the lock, newsy,” he ordered.

Robby huffed and limped forward, pulling out some stuff from his pocket. After fiddling with the door next to the loading dock for a few seconds, we heard a click and Robby pushed the door open with a dramatic flourish.

Harry pushed past him, obviously not in the mood. Robby responded with irritation.

“I better go shut off the cameras!” Little Sally whispered, and immediately ran off into the darkness. Billy Boy Bill shouted for her to wait and ran after her.

“Why did we let _her_ come along?” Little Becky asked, gesturing after Sally with an air of disgust.

“Because she’s the only one here with an IQ over fifty,” I mumbled under my breath.

“Did you say somethin’ Anita?” Hot Blades asked threateningly.

“Nope!”

“Hey guys, come on!” Tiny Tom said excitedly, grabbing Stebbo’s hand and pulling him towards the boy’s clothing section. I saw Hot Blades and Becky head off together (probably to screw around, and I mean that literally), and Robby sprinted for the toy section. That left me and Bobby, and Bobby was already jogging for the food aisle.

A devilish smile crossed my face, and I followed him with the stealthiest footsteps I could manage.

Bobby snatched up a basket before stopping in the meat aisle and pulling out as many packages of ground beef, sausages, chicken legs, and other meats as he could. Then he moved on to the canned food aisle and started loading up too. I knew his mom wouldn’t approve of him stealing, so I had a feeling he’d be selling all this to Soupy Sue so he could get a few coins, maybe even buy his dad those pain meds he needed since his arthritis had started up again.

What a sweet boy. I was gonna get him so hard he wouldn’t know what hit him.

Okay, in all honesty, I didn’t want to keep Bobby from getting a few coins, but really. The guy basically hated my guts. There was really only one way to repay this kind of treatment – with JUSTICE.

I ran towards the dairy aisle as fast as I could and grabbed a carton of eggs. Why did they put the eggs in the dairy aisle anyway? Cows didn’t make eggs, unless there was some government conspiracy going on about it that I didn’t know about. I didn’t want to rule that out.

As quietly as a mouse, I tiptoed back to the canned goods aisle and pulled out an egg. Bobby was still shoving cans of Spam and beans into his basket; good, it’s easier to hit a still target. I arched my hand back, aimed for his head, and threw the egg down the aisle.

_SPLAT!_

Bobby spluttered into a scream and dropped his basket of goods, whipping around to see me holding a carton of eggs and giggling manically.

He wiped the egg off his face and picked up his basket. “Oh, you are so dead,” he growled.

I just snickered and threw another egg at him. He dodged it easily and came running towards me.

With a shriek, I threw the entire carton at him and sprinted down the next aisle, running as fast as I could. I could hear Bobby cursing and yelling as I flew through the pet section into the embroidery area – why the hell did K-Mart have an embroidery area?! Bobby followed close behind, his basket of meat and cans clanging loudly with every step. I cackled and dodged under what looked like a giant spool of thread and ran into the sewing section, which had bolts of cloth everywhere. Then, I saw something lying on a pile of cloth in the middle of the aisle and stopped dead.

Oh shit.

Bobby ran around the corner, yelling, “I SWEAR TO GOD ANITA I’M-”

“Shut up!” I hissed, pointing frantically towards the lump on the floor. It took a second for him to realize what it was, but as soon as he did, I could practically feel his blood freeze.

Now, because the K-Mart was cheap as hell, it could only afford the most miniscule security possible. There were about three working cameras, which Little Sally had probably shut off, and a single night guard here every night. The night guard in question was Tiles Mason, one of the older trainees who was basically a cop already (he’d been held back for cheating on the exam all four times he’d taken it), and he happened to be lying on a pile of cloth right in front of us, sleeping right through our insanity.

Now, usually Tiles was drunk on Saturday nights and never showed up for his night shift (which is exactly why we were robbing it tonight), but of course, he chose _tonight_ of all nights to stay sober and come sleep at his place of temporary employment.

Just flipping dandy.

“Oh shit,” Bobby breathed. “What do we do?”

“We get the hell out of here, that’s what we do!” I hissed, backing up. Bobby followed suit, both of us keeping our eyes on Tiles in case he decided to wake up. He snored loudly and shifted on his pile, his hat falling off the cloth and onto the ground lightly.

We got out of his sight a moment later and breathed a sigh of relief, just before an enormous crash of what sounded like ten trillion pots and pans – there was probably a grill thrown in there too, let’s get real – falling to the tiled linoleum floor.

Tiles snorted and said a groggy, “Huh?” behind us, and Bobby and I looked at each other.

Oh _shit._

“Haha, sorry guys!” Robby shouted, kicking one of the pans loudly. “Good thing we’re the only ones in here, right?”

“THE HELL YOU ARE!” Tiles bellowed, running towards the opposite end of the aisle with his baton drawn.

“Oh shit,” I heard Hot Blades yell. “EVERYBODY RUN!”

And that’s when the entire store filled with screams as people ran for the loading dock door as fast as they could.

Bobby and I had a head start, since we were the closest, and he hauled his loot all the way through the door and held it open for everyone else. Little Sally and Billy Boy were the next through, then Robby, then Harry and Becky, and finally Stebbo ran out dragging a distraught Tiny Tom behind him.

“My snapbacks!” Tiny cried.

“GET BACK HERE!” Tiles shouted, running for the door.

Bobby and I shrieked and slammed the door, Robby and Hot Blades shoving a heavy crate in front of it and pushing us out of the way. Then, the nine of us immediately sprinted into the twisting alleyways of the Slants, disappearing in the brick and stone jungle just before the door burst open, setting the alarm off.

“I’LL GET YOU THIEVES! I’LL GET YOU!” Tiles shouted, but we were sprinting off towards the gang clubhouse as fast as our feet could carry us, laughing our heads off.

Once we got inside, we dumped our loot on the ground and sat next to it – I hadn’t gotten anything since I’d been so busy pranking Bobby, damn it – laughing, or in Tiny’s case, sobbing. Hot Blades hooted and fell onto his back, fists pumped into the air.

“Fuck yeah!” he shouted. “We did it!”

It took us all a few minutes to calm down. Once we all stopped laughing, Hot Blades sat up and looked around, grinning like a maniac. Then, when he got to Bobby, his smile slipped off and he raised an eyebrow.

“Hey Strong, what’s that on your head?” he asked, pointing.

Bobby’s hand was halfway to his face before he remembered that I’d pegged him with an egg.

“It’s an egg,” I said proudly, smirking at him.

“An egg?” Hot Blades asked. Then, everyone but Bobby burst into laughter. Bobby, meanwhile, was glaring at me.

“An egg? Nice job, Anita!” Billy Boy shouted.

“It fits, ‘cause he’s such an egghead!” Stebbo added.

Everyone continued to laugh as Bobby’s eyes fried holes into my brain.

“Anita, I am going to kill you,” he threatened.

I just stuck my tongue out at him and ran for the door, Bobby following me into the alleys so he could try and stuff me into a trashcan.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> i'm sorry i've been wanting to write a chapter where the gang tries to steal shit from the kmart since i started this insanity and now i finally have i hope you enjoy it


	17. The Slants Annual Cooking Contest

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Soupy Sue 14, Tiles Mason and Barrel are 17, Julie Cassidy is 16, Jacob Rosenbloom and Felix McFain are 11, Zeta Blu is 13

Isaac Barrel is the worst chef known to man. The problem? He doesn’t seem to understand that.

Soupy Sue, of course, knows that very well; she prides herself on being the best chef this side of the riverbed, and she plans to keep it that way. The problem is that a certain asshole three years older than her seems to think he can surpass her obviously superior cooking skills. Like most of her friends, Soupy Sue doesn’t react too well to rising competition.

“I’ll show him,” Sue says menacingly, pacing back and forth on the giant dirt field behind the school. Rumor has it that the city council is planning to cover it with sod and make it into an actual park sometime soon, but Sue doubts that. The last time the city council did anything useful for the Slants was when they helped that hot shot Cladwell clean up the streets. Which, by the way, was about two years ago.

Soupy’s two friends, Julie Cassidy and Jacob Rosenbloom, sit in the dirt and play tic-tac-toe while Soupy Sue paces angrily next to them. After a few more minutes of angry muttering, Julie can’t take it anymore.

“Oh calm down, would you?” she groans. “Isaac’s just a little prick, what’s the big deal?”

“What’s the big deal? I’ll tell you what’s the big deal!” Soupy shouts. “He thinks he’s a better chef than me! That crooked, no good, red-headed little-”

“Whoa, hey,” Jacob interrupts her, gesturing to himself. “Keep in mind there are small children present.”

Soupy just rolls her eyes and continues to pace angrily, slamming her fist into her palm.

“I wish there was a way to stick it to that little dickbutt that _I’m_ the best chef in this town. I bet he can’t even grill a steak without burning it!”

“Steak doesn’t exist in the Slants anymore, Soupy,” Julie reminded her.

“Whatever, you get my point!”

Suddenly, Jacob snaps his fingers to get their attention, looking over at the edge of the field. When Soupy glances in that direction, she sees – aw hell.

Isaac Barrel, along with is stupid little half a posse, are scoping the field for something. Or, in this case, someone. When he sees Soupy Sue, an evil grin spreads over his face and he starts walking over.

Soupy really doesn’t need this. If he gets within three feet of her, she’ll punch him straight into the riverbed.

“Well, look who it is,” Isaac says, putting his hands on his hips. Damn it, just out of Sue’s punching range. “Little Soupy Sue and her pair of nerds, playing in the dirt. Adorable.”

“What do you want, Barrel,” Soupy asks, crossing her arms. “Trying to intimidate me? Sorry, I’m not scared of skimpy little jerks who think they can cook.”

Soupy hears Julie and Jacob go, “Oooooh,” behind her until Tiles Mason glares at them and cracks his knuckles. Julie sticks her tongue out at Mason, and Jacob, much to Soupy’s annoyance, pulls out the middle finger.

Innocent small child her ass.

Barrel scoffs. “Ya really think you’re a better chef than me?” he smirks. “Fine, let’s prove it. Slants Annual Cooking Contest is next month out by Topper’s Cross. If I win, ya lose your title as best chef this side of the river. Seem fair?”

“Plenty fair,” Sue responds, smirking back. “But if I win, you have to tell me _to my face_ that I’m a better chef than you’ll ever be. Deal?”

Barrel’s eye twitches slightly. “Deal,” he grumbles, and holds out his hand. Soupy takes it and shakes it once. Then he and his posse sulk off the field, kicking up dust in their wake.

Jacob and Julie are staring at her like she just signed her own warrant of execution.

“What?” she asks.

Jacob rubs the back of his neck. “I really hope you know what you’re doing, Soupy,” he says.

Soupy Sue smirks. “Oh please,” she says, “everyone knows I make the best grub in town. I’ll win this thing by a landslide.”

“But what if ya don’t?” he asks.

“I will.”

 

* * *

 

A month passes, and finally the day of the Slants Annual Cooking Contest is upon them. People come from everywhere (even the rich side of town!) to come watch and, if they’re lucky, taste. Soupy’s never competed in it before, but she knows all the rules, just like everyone else. Contestants are given a mystery crate of food and supplies, assigned a stove set up outside and haphazardly plugged into an outlet in a Topper’s Cross building, and left to their wits to create the best tasting dish in under an hour. The prize for winning this year is ownership of the old diner that shut down last year near the edge of the Slants.

Soupy Sue has to admit that it’ll be a nice bonus to beating Isaac Barrel’s smug little ass.

Soupy, Julie, and Jacob all arrive a few minutes before it starts, the latter two holding signs to support their friend. Jacob’s says, “SOUPY SUE FOR BEST CHEF IN THE SLANTS.” Julie’s says, “SOUPEY SUE MAKES BARREL SOOPY BLUE!”

“How did you manage to spell ‘soupy’ wrong _twice_?” Sue asks her friend. Julie just shrugs and unashamedly lifts her sign up for everyone to see.

“I’m literally five years younger than her, how can I spell better than she can?” Jacob asks.

“You can’t, idiot, I just messed up and couldn’t afford extra poster paper.”

“Did that slogan even make sense in your head?”

“It makes perfect sense, you little shrimp!”

Soupy sighs. “Guys, just… don’t get into trouble, okay?” she asks them. “Please. I have a contest to win here.”

“Yep, alright Soupy,” Jacob says before looking right at Julie and telling her, “spelled _s-o-u_ -”

“I get it, Jacob!” Julie yells.

Soupy Sue snickers and walks over to the contestant line. There are only five people, including herself and Barrel, competing this year, probably because of the hard times from the drought. In a few years, Soupy even suspects that the contest may not even be possible anymore.

A minute later, Isaac Barrel waltzes up next to her, hands nonchalantly in the pockets of his drawstring pants. Soupy resists the urge to punch his smug face on the spot.

“Still think you’re gonna beat me?” he asks, looking at her out of the corner of his eye.

“Hell yeah, twerp,” she replies through gritted teeth.

He scoffs. “We’ll see about that.”

Soupy sneaks a glance at him out of the corner of her eye. Something… doesn’t seem right. He’s too confident and smug.

The “referee” for this year’s Annual Cooking Contest is Old So-and-So, who yells out through a crackly megaphone, “ALRIGHT NOSE HAIRS, GO GET AN OVEN AND SOMEONE’LL DROP OFF A BOX OF SHIT FOR Y’ALL. WHEN I SAY GO, YOU OPEN THE BOX. IF YOU OPEN IT ANYTIME _BEFORE_ I SAY GO I WILL PERSONALLY THROW YOU INTO THE RIVERBED, CAPICHE?”

“Who decided to make _him_ the ref?” whispers woman next to Soupy.

The contestants all grumble their agreements and walk over to an oven/stove, which all have a table next to them to serve as counter space. After fiddling with her stove for a few seconds, Soupy hears a box fall on the ground a few feet away and looks up to see… wait, is that Tiles?

Yes, it is. Tiles Mason walks a few feet and drops another box on the ground near the second contestant, winking to someone behind Soupy. She turns around and sees Isaac Barrel return the wink and preheat his oven.

Oh no.

“Wait!” Soupy yells. “Tiles Mason is-”

“SHUT UP CRUST BALL,” Old-So-and-So screams through his megaphone. “NO TALKING ONCE THE BOXES ARE PASSED OUT.”

“But-”

“I SAID ZIP IT, COTTON CANDY!”

Soupy stares at Old So-and-So in dismay before turning to Barrel, enraged. Barrel just gives her a devilish grin and a shrugs.

Oh, that moldy piece of overcooked salami was gonna get it.

Tiles dumps Soupy Sue’s box on the ground at her feet. “Good luck, loser,” he whispers before continuing on to Barrel’s station. He hands him his box and leaves, both of them smugly watching Soupy fume.

“GO!” Old So-and-So shouts, snapping Soupy back to reality. She looks down at her box and sighs, squatting down and pulling it open. Inside…

Oh wow, this really is a disaster.

She pulls out one pot, one wooden spoon, a cutting board, a knife, a chipped ceramic bowl, a plastic Spork, and a hodgepodge mix of ingredients. There’s chicken stock, bacon, a jar of honey, five potatoes, three apples, a package of ground cinnamon, sprinkles, a package of fatty beef, and a jar of… truffle oil. What even was that?

Soupy looks around and sees that everyone else is having just as much trouble as she is, except, of course, Barrel. He’s equipped with an armory of fancy pots and pans, tons of fresh produce and meat, and what looks like the entire spice section of K-Mart. As everyone else looks at their supplies in panic, Isaac Barrel turns a few knobs on his stove and places his pans on them, filling them up with tasty and delicious ingredients.

Right then, and not a moment sooner, does Soupy Sue begin to worry about losing.

 _Calm down_ , she tells herself, looking at her supplies. _Calm down, you can figure this out. You can still beat him. Best chef this side of the riverbed, right? You can figure something out!_

Then she hears cheering and looks over at Jacob and Julie, yelling at her to get started and waving their soup signs around like maniacs.

That’s when Soupy Sue’s cooking genius strikes.

As quickly as she can, Soupy places the pot on her stove and puts everything else on the table, opening the package of bacon and chopping up the meat. Then she puts the bacon in the pot and turns on the heat, letting them cook while she wipes her knife on her apron and thinly slices up the apple. Once the bacon is sizzling, she drops in the apple and sprinkles in a little cinnamon, stirring it up with her spoon. After enough time has passed for the bacon to soak up the flavor, she takes out the apple slices and dumps in the chicken stock.

 _God I hope this works,_ she thinks.

The next hour is spent in a flurry of chopping, stirring, slicing, and boiling. Somehow, Soupy manages to use everything but the sprinkles – although she had to give the truffle oil a taste before she dumped it in. At thirty minutes, two of the contestants have already quit, and the third is just dumping everything into a pot and hoping it turns out okay. Barrel is, of course, flambéing and sautéing whatever concoction it is he’s putting together over there, giving people a show and smirking at Soupy every once in a while.

Soupy, however, doesn’t notice. She’s too busy cooking.

After one final taste test, Soupy Sue finally turns off the stove, and a minute later a timer goes off and Old So-and-So shouts, “TURN OFF YOUR OVENS AND STOVES, CRETINS. TIME TO TASTE.”

Sue spoons some of her… sludge into the ceramic bowl and carries it over to the testing table. The tasters this year are Old Ma Strong, Rodger Roosevelt (the insane preacher guy), and a kid close to Soupy’s age named Shanks McDougal. She places her bowl on the judge table, and Barrel and the other woman quickly follow suit. The three contestants look at each other and wait for the verdict.

First, Barrel’s is passed around. Lots of approving “mmm” sounds and nodding of the head. Soupy Sue’s stomach twists as Barrel’s evil grin gets wider.

Second, the other woman’s is tried, and it barely gets past Shanks before her dish is pushed to the side. The woman bursts into tears and runs off the bridge in shame as the judges wash their mouths out with water. Barrel gives Soupy Sue a glance, his eyes telling her that he already thinks he’s won.

 _We’ll see about that,_ she thinks to herself.

And then, finally, it’s Sue’s turn. Old Ma Strong take’s Soupy’s ceramic bowl and sticks a plastic Spork into the sludge, giving it a wary look before popping it into her mouth.

She chews for a second.

And then her face lights up like it’s Christmas morning.

“Oh wow!” she says, taking another bite. Rodger Roosevelt pulls the bowl towards him and takes a bite too, and then Shanks. All three of them look as if they’ve just tasted the best thing they’ve ever eaten.

Soupy’s heart is racing. She can’t believe it.

“We have a winner!” Old Ma Strong says, standing up and holding Soupy’s bowl of sludge high in the sky. “Soupy Sue is this year’s winner of the Slants Annual Cooking Contest!”

The crowd bursts into euphoric cheering and applause.

Soupy screams, “YES!” and jumps into the air, throwing her fist up like she won the goddamn Superbowl. Barrel just stares at her in shock, his freckled face pale as the moon.

A second later, Soupy Sue is tackled to the ground by Julie and Jacob, both of them laughing and screaming, “YOU WON YOU WON YOU WON!”

“I WON!” Soupy shouts back. “I WON, I DID IT! I DID IT!”

After a minute of screaming and celebrating, Soupy Sue hauls herself up and runs to her stove to serve up her dish. People take the sludge greedily and eat it up just as fast, asking for seconds even after the pot has long been empty. Old Ma Strong comes up to her, licking the ceramic bowl and passing Soupy the key to the diner. _Her own restaurant?_ She can’t even believe it.

It isn’t until after everyone finally begins to disperse that Isaac Barrel sulks up to her, his posse behind him. He grumbles something under his breath.

“What was that?” Soupy asks, holding her wooden spoon and crossing her arms. Behind her, Julie is standing by the stove and Jacob sits on the table, swinging his legs.

Barrel huffs and tells the floor, “You’re the better chef.”

“I’m sorry, is the floor the better chef, or am I?” Soupy Sue smirks at Barrel, feeling liberated at the sight of how uncomfortable he is.

“You, Soupy Sue,” Barrel says through gritted teeth, looking up at her face, “are a better chef than I’ll ever be. There, you happy?”

Soupy grins. “Very,” she says.

Barrel glares at her and clenches his fists, and for a second Soupy Sue is afraid he’s gonna beat her up, but he just spins around and stomps off towards the Slants. Soupy Sue grins smugly after him.

“So, now what?” Jacob asks, licking out the bottom of her pot. All the supplies she used in the contest were now hers to own, even the table and stove oven. Good. Soupy had a feeling she was going to need them.

“Now?” Soupy says. “Now, I start a restaurant and start making bank. You guys wanna help me out?”

Julie and Jacob look at each other and grin.

“Hell yeah!” they shout.

Soupy Sue grins wider than the Cheshire cat, and the three of them grab their things and head back into the Slants. She's proven she's the best chef this side of the Slants; now it's time to start using that

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> and that my children is how soupy sue started a business at fourteen that became so profitable that rich people literally come to her diner and offer making it a chain restaurant  
> soupy sue tells them to fuck off  
> if they still dont leave she starts throwing bowls


End file.
